17 Jan

Lookout! I don’t know why… but do it anyway.

So, after my rant in December about printers, I’ve now used a printer in 2014 more than i ever did in 2013… and just to annoy me it took about half an hour for the printer to work… grr. Evil lumps of stupidity. And plastic. but mostly stupid.

Anyway, houses… today I viewed a few places… 2 stood out as particularly bad… The first, the one I got up at 8 for, was an apartment about the size of a badminton court. The living room couldn’t fit a sofa… I’ve no idea how anyone could live in that small space, or pay so much for that.

The other… someone decided, at some point in its history, to remodel the entire inside building. they moved the bathroom, the kitchen, and added a conservatory, where one wall was basically just leaning on the outside wall of next doors extensions. The cistern for the old toilet was still visible behind the boiler, and the floor below the boiler was about to collapse. Then, despite the agents assurances the wiring had been redone recently, found three broken sockets, and several loose hanging cables. The walls looked like Iron man had used them as punching bags, with fist sized holes.

As I don’t want to die in my new home, I don’t think I’ll go for that one.

I am getting closer to finding a place though, hopefully will have some good news this week 🙂

And with that, I leave you with 2 things – a question:

If you were a robot, which would you be? Find out my answer, next time!

And a red panda.

D'aaawww

Dave.

31 Dec

This blog is not about puppies.

Hes tired and hes typing.

That may not be a good thing.

So…

Hi!

its been about 3 months since I last typed something here.

Amazingly, not a lot has happened, so you might be thinking you’ve started reading this for no reason, and nothing will come of this, but, I fear, your pessimism is badly placed! Something will come of your visiting this page today, I assure you! And so, to the business of entertaining you, and your fellow human beings! And the 2 cats that might read this! LETS GO.

House hunting is HARD. Mostly cause i have to do the whole financing thing first, but once thats done its just hard to see a good place to go viewing at the right price. There’s the ‘obviously need work’ ones… the ‘holy crap you made that look big but its obviously too small for a kitten’ ones, the “wait… where is exactly is that… oh.” ones, the “that’s a lot of flags….” ones, the “TIGER. THE NEIGHBOUR HAS A TIGER” ones, and finally the “I can’t see anything wrong with this, whats wrong with it, oh that’s a peace wall” ones.

Though I’m sure i’ll find a place sooner or later… Preferably one without an impending doom, and not overly pink. So very many of them are very pink…

Moving on… I have minions! Ish. For a bit. Not really. I’m training people. And making sure they do things right. In work, not other places… though if you consider yourself my minion let me know and I’ll make sure to treat you as you expect!

My obsession with boardgames has not diminished, much to my friends joy/consternation, and i now own 47 base games, with a few variants too bringing them to over 50. If anyone would like to organize a night to play said games, heres a list, and I am always ready to play 🙂

Since my last blog I turned 28, and that has led to absolutely no differences in my life whatsoever. So, next big thing…

Hmm..

I got a new phone! Yes, this seems to happen very often but this time, this time its different. This time its a Sony Z3 Compact. This time, it doesn’t need charged very often. This time… its awesome. It doesn’t bend.

A few things I found out in the last month:

  • Apparently I’ve mellowed out from being absolutely weird 5 years ago to just being a bit weird.
    • but the better kind of weird where my weirdnesses are actually useful.
  • Being polite is confusing to some people…
  • Steam trains are loud at 9AM..
  • I don’t know how to be more excited about episode 7 than I am already…
  • I can stay awake much later than i thought and still be functional…
  • Cats aren’t as evil as I once thought..
  • Tea isn’t that bad when its made in the right way…
  • I kinda want to build a snowman so you won’t get very far singing that song at me.
  • Its apparently normal to own a printer.

Ok, that last point, Printers. Printers are a horrible creation, a necessary evil of the pre internet age, that are only required by the unfortunate few. You see, I have printed around about 10 sheets of paper in the last 2 years, and I expect to print even less next year. Now, if i was to set up the printer I own, but is currently boxed up in the attic, it would cost me a good half hour to get working, another x amount of time to get ink for, and then theres paper. On the other hand if I were to print those few pages a year in work, or some other printing location it would cost less, take less time, and therefore be better. And thus, I have no need for a printer. Its not like I spend a chunk of my time printing photos of cats and sticking them up around my computer, or beside my bed….

Ok, so now i’ve un-necessarily argued against owning a printer, I think thats enough of a rant for tonight.

Good something*!

 

*Where something is a day, night, morning, cat, evening, or otherwise. I don’t know what kind of semantics pattern you have if you sleep 16 hours a day.

22 Sep

The back end of nowhere is kinda pretty

Its been a while!

Its September, the month of… something. What normally happens in September? Schools start back… but I don’t care about that anymore. OH. No… wait… I don’t care about holiday prices dropping… OH!I DO care about all my friends being in the country again! Except those that fled to England. Or Scotland. Or, in one case, America. Did I really scare you that much? I’m sorry! Come back! I won’t do it again!

 

Anyway…. today is the 22nd of September. Or the 23rd… if you’re reading it tomorrow. Or in Europe! Or further east! But more likely tomorrow… This means it is now 3 weeks till my 28th birthday, and I’ll come up with something to do then. Maybe. Its a tuesday, so… yeah.

So what did I do over the past few months? I did several things. lets go in reverse order, so I can remember them…

I got a promotion! I’m now a ‘Senior Software Engineer’. Appropriate as I’m about to turn 28…

I moved to Belfast! Again. This is likely explained better below. My dad no longer has a manse…(yay promotion!) so we get to live in the city now! A small apartment…

I moved to Greenisland again! For 3 weeks. That means parents, and that means less fun 🙁

I moved out of Belfast! Ruth came home and wanted her house back 🙁

The Word weekend happened! I have to do the audio… I should get round to that tomorrow… but it was awesome!

I bought a Drone! Its currently out of action after a… let’s call it an emergency landing. But it’ll be fixed up soon!

We started a Second RPG group! they were much faster than the other group… just saying…

Tech Camp happened! It was brilliant. I’m tired and running out of words…

Loughbrickland connect happened! People were shocked and amazed at my ability to get internet in the back end of nowhere… but I did! Kids were brilliant and it sucked to leave for the next thing… which is above…

July happened! I don’t remember July much… nor June. What happened in those 2 months? Did i get my car in June? No? It was May? Ok then. I got a new car! Its a DS3. Its not a girls car. Its awesome.

I went back in time! Wait. No. I’m not supposed to mention that. It hasn’t happened yet.

 

 

Smile, you’re not turning 28. 🙂

Dave.

 

 

 

Oh, yes, the title. I’ve spent a lot of time in the back end of nowhere. And managed to get signal there! I took photos. They were pretty. I’ll put them somewhere.

11 Sep

Summer – The other bits.

Other than a trip to Japan, other significant things happened this summer… I started a new job!

That’s right, I don’t watch youtube for a living anymore! I now make software for card machines in shops, for a company called Merchant Warehouse. We primarily make it for US machines, which are bigger and more capable than our card machines. I think if you use a machine in some stores where it says our company name on the screen, then you’re using software I helped fix a few weeks ago, though unless you’re on the east coast of the US, ythats unlikely. I could break our devices if I wanted to here though…

Before you ask, yes, I’m enjoying it, and its a definite step up.

OTHER THINGS.

For a few days in August I helped out in Loughbrickland Connect. So many things to say about this, but its late and I’ve already written an extensive blog tonight… so all I’ll say was: great people, great kids, a great experience, and a great God.

Next….

I moved out! I now live somewhere else in Belfast… Its great living by oneself. One can really start calling oneself one when oneself has no one around to stop one saying one a lot.

Lastly, I was at the Word weekend again! Another great weekend in another random place with another great speaker and more great people.

Another thing about living with oneself is I’m now supposed to do some form of organized abode temperature increasing event…. hmmm…

OH.

Yeah.

I did some abseiling for SUNI with some friends from church and SU. Please donate! https://www.justgiving.com/Dave-Stothers

 

14 Oct

It’s my birthday and I’ll listen to Radio 4 if I want to.

That’s right, I listen to Radio 4 now. I’m old. 26 years old in fact.

And I’m OK with that.

So what does this mean now?

Jack all. Except I won’t understand when people talk about the top 40, and understand politics better.

Anyway, this week in work is going to be a living nightmare, so lets talk about other things! The last time I watched someone play FIFA was 2007. I watched someone play it again yesterday. It hasn’t changed. Normal games would get DLC for this kind of incremental change, not 5 £45 new games.

Keeping with the gaming talk, except onto a decent franchise that doesn’t rip off its customers, play The Walking Dead. Its not a normal game, more like a make-your-own-adventure book, and its great. I’ve had games make me jump, but this got me pretty close to tears at one point. The story follows the zombie apocalypse, like the TV show, but a guy running with a little girl he found in a treehouse, and trying to look after her. They come across a family, parents and a 10 year old son, and you spend several game hours with them, building a friendship with the father, and leaning on the mother as she was one of the most reasonable, sane people in the group. Then, the son gets bit while running from one of their ‘safe’ houses. The boy is dying, but everyone knows he will turn into a zombie when he dies. The mother and father make the hard decision that they have to shoot him, as they don’t want him coming back as a zombie. When its clear the boy is about to die, you watch as they argue about which of them should shoot him. You convince them that either the mother or father should do it, then watch as they take the boy into the wood so the little girl with you doesn’t see. You hear a shot, but something isn’t right. The father is screaming to his wife. Your character runs to see what was happening. The mother is lying on the ground, with a pistol in her hand and her brains blown out. She’d shot herself, unable to bear the sight of her son dying. Your job is then to console the grieving husband and make sure the son doesn’t come back. You have the choice to take the gun, or let the distraught father do it. It’s hard to pull that trigger. And then you have to console a grieving father for the rest of the game. Its more fun than it sounds.

On to a lighter note! Looper is a good movie! Though Joseph Gordon Levitts eyebrows confused me. It was like they digitally skewed his face to make him look like Bruce Willis, though I’m pretty certain they didn’t.

Taken 2 is not that great. It needed to be a 15, not a movie where people died when Liam Neesan touched them. He’s not Chuck Norris. Also, the pistol I have for Airsoft is the same as his in the first half of the movie. And my spell checker doesn’t recognize Movie… aaand now it does. Though it doesn’t look right now…

Speaking of airsoft, Its fun. Do it. But bring gloves. And hopefully the 3 massive welts from yesterday on my forehead will have faded by now (I don’t wear forehead protection. It’s not smart). In a nutshell its realistic looking firearms powered by gas or motors, firing pellets at about 300 feet per second. Its just enough to hurt, maybe bruise, maybe break skin, definitely break your eyeball, but if you’re wearing loose layers and the face protection, you’re fine. It’s like Call of Duty where you can actually inflict real pain on annoying people.

What else am I doing now I’m 26? Looking suspicious. Its a life plan.

No one knows what the numbers meant (which I forgot to put in the last 2 posts…) so, here it is again, 295! 295. Thats right. 295. Yup.

Dave – One day older than 25.

P.S. Thanks to all you lovely people for the birthday messages.

P.P.S. I wrote this yesterday. If I broke present/past/future/grammatical tense then I apologize.

 

 

12 Sep

Oh woah, oh woah, oh woah, oh oh

A while back I discovered people actually do read this.

So HELLO ALL YOU FUN MAGICAL PEOPLE. Well, only one of you is magical. If you think its you, its not.

Still, no one has the correct answer for the number game. It went up this time. To 263.  I get the feeling its going to keep going up, and then drop dramatically, at some point. Who knows?

I don’t have much to blog about today, I just thought I should blog about something. I watched the Some Nights by Fun. video about 40 times this afternoon so I kinda have that going around my head. Alot. So if I suddenly break into the lyrics of that song I apologize.

So, I was never one to believe the hype. Save that for the black and white iphone collectors. Today the new iPhone was announced, and its ridiculously mundane.  There is nothing at all interesting about it, and its really just another incremental increase. The only good thing I can see about it is its not all glass on the back, and its lighter, so its no longer as fragile as that glass you were drinking out of earlier. Pepsi? Really? Couldn’t find any real coke? Anyway, They also continue to refuse to stick to an EU mandated standard port. Everyone else can do it… why can’t Apple? I know the Apple fanboys have already tuned out, but do they ever ask them selves “I sold my soul for this?!?” For one of the least charitable companies in silicon valley it sure has a lot of fans who should know better.

Well, that is it guys, that is all – five minutes in and I’m bored again. Its actually been more than five minutes. Weird.

Hope this fulfilled all your requirements for a weird Dave Blog!

(I’m not actually sorry.)

30 Aug

*pigeon noise*

I can make a rather convincing pigeon noise, apparently. I don’t do those other things pigeons do though. That would be gross. My other bird noises suck.

Onto more important, sensible, matters, I’m currently investigating the possibility of live-streaming our church service. If anyone has any experience in the legality and cheapness of this endeavour please let me know. And if you’re interested in listening, also let me know.

Back to the first point, loosely. Still being sensible though. I was at The Word last weekend, a PCI Young Adults conference thing. It had some of the more interesting talks I’ve listened to… And you can listen to! As soon as I can get the talks appropriately edited. That’ll be a while. If you’re interested in learning and growing and building up your presby friend network outside of your home church, please do go next year.

And this links nicely to my next point, you should volunteer for MAD. I know that other denomination has that other thing at the same time, our t-shirts are Red. Everybody looks good in red. Nobody looks good in Yellow. Plus, you get to see dozens of tired looking mad crew, finding entertaining ways to stay awake. Not that you’ll be tired. I’ll make sure to provide you with lots of sugar and caffeine. And a pillow. Not for sleeping, for screaming into and punching. It helps.

I may have gone too far there. That last bit wasn’t true. In fact quite a bit of that wasn’t true. But everyone does look better in red than yellow.

OH! I got my glasses. I have been having much merriment pretending I’ve always worn glasses, and confusing people. Its mean. But its fun.

Todays magic number, as referenced in the last blog, is 250! Its going up! Next time, it might go down. Maybe. That hasn’t been decided yet. It is not the number of people who’ve called me weird minus the number of people who’ve called me normal this year so far, but thats a decent guess.  That number is closer to 122. Half of those happened within a 24 hour period last weekend. Turns out pigeon noises are weird.

When you have a correct guess, let me know in secret. That way, I can confuse everyone else.

Thank you and remember, if I’m weird, what does that make that duck staring at you through the window? Go on. Open your curtains. Take a look.

Dave.

 

Still haven’t started that something else. Should really get a move on…

 

18 Aug

And so it ends. And begins. And something else ends. There’s lots of ends and beginnings right now. Lots of middles too.

Long title is long.

Things happened in the last week, like Tech Camp ended! I have absolutely no idea what happened on the last day. I was knackered and trying to burn/cook things while real stuff happened. After church my memory is fairly blurry, but apparently a good number of the kids REALLY enjoyed their time there, and are already looking forward to next year, so SUCCESS.

OTHER THINGS HAPPENED.

I started utilising Farset Labs, a hackerspace in Belfast. There’ll be a project log here soon for a nice little R.O.V. I’m building, though I’m having power issues and need to reduce the current going through things… anyway, good place, good smart folk.

I took a week off work! This was initially for New Horizon but I ended up using it primarily for recovery, popping up when I felt able/economically viable. This was the first time I’ve been to NH, and it was pretty awesome… even just the 2 nights I was up were pretty great, though it wasn’t exactly cool in that tent.  Definitely gonna aim for the full week next year. Saw some old friends… and got the same feeling I get at missiony things.

And thus my week off is over. And then comes 10(?) months of having to read and listen to seemingly random hate and stupid rhetoric from my football loving friends. Every time I see this crap it makes my head hurt how they can consider themselves fans and talk about these people like they hate the very ground they walk on, and would gladly flip the switch on their electric chair if given the chance.  ‘The scum’ is a phrase I hear far too often, and the genuine hate and disgust in peoples voices when talking about certain players  is just sickening, especially when it involves the players private lives. I don’t see how this is the slightest bit relevant as to how anyone but the players live their lives. We are not involved. We shouldn’t even know about this crap, why on earth are you getting so angry about it? In the years I have been observing people supporting football, I have only seen one instance where I can be proud of anyone in football, and that took a miraculous recovery.

The fact is, football is so unbelievably corrupted by hate and over valuing of individuals, that it takes a full miracle to see any good in it, and knowing that my friends happily accept this, and even join in with the hate, is scary. Particularly when they encourage their kids into the same pattern of hate. I long for odd numbered years when theres some freedom from this crap.

So the other thing that starts today is X Factor. This is…. stupid. I could say more but I think I’ll only annoy some of my friends tonight.

And finally, if you got this far, how is the number 238 relevant, at the time of writing? Get it right and you might get a prize. The prize may not exist yet. Or ever. In fact, if OfCom’s listening, there is no prize. But if they’re not, there is. Trust me.

So, yeah. Thats it.

 

Though, on a side note, I wanna begin something else.

6 Aug

Its not ridiculous if it works.

Right now, the Olympics is happening. And it gives an… interesting perspective.

1 man can run a hundred meters in 9.63 seconds.

Now, when you think that many men and women, working off the shoulders of many more, fired a rocket at Mars, and successfully softly landed a 1 ton automated laboratory on a planet tens of thousands of miles away, using the most ingenious delivery system ever devised, with a margin of error so small it makes my head hurt, does this achievement by one individual not pale in comparison? I wish I knew someone who was involved in designing, testing, or even scrubbing a part on the curiosity delivery system just so I could congratulate them. Instead my tax money goes towards a project 5 times as expensive that I feel about as involved in as… well… a rover on Mars.

Anyway, the title is most specifically about the delivery system. It is… insane. All the last set of rovers were delivered in similar pinpoint accuracy using a bouncing ball method. This involved being slowed by parachutes, then the capsule is completely surrounded in air cushions so it becomes a ball. This is fine for a 100kg capsule, that could sri-mech itself flat then release the tiny payload to run around mars. Its not fine for a one ton behemoth that would’ve needed massive cushions and massive parachutes.

So someone then came up with the idea of using rockets to slow it down, as a parachute would need to be the size of a lake to slow it down enough.

But rockets would kick up a LOT of dust at the surface,  and would be unpredictable close to the surface so a traditional rocket based landing would be risky.

So some genius had the fantastic idea of using rockets to hover, and lowering the one ton rover, naked, down to the surface.

When I first saw this plan I thought there was absolutely no chance it could succeed. Well… it did.  And thats the greatest achievement humanity has made this year.

So, when I read this, less than an hour after the rover successfully touched down on Mars, it rang through my head all day (link may not work, try this). The quote, “nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do” (or something along those lines) is taken from Genesis 11, verse 6, when God chose to scatter us around the earth and give us different languages, as we were progressing too quickly.

I wonder what it means, that we seem to be beyond that limitation. Russell Kirsch imagined digital photographs, and the internally programmed computer, and made it so. NASA thought up a delivery method for dropping a ton of lab equipment softly on Mars, and actually did it. We live in a great time when these things are possible. The list of impossible things is getting shorter everyday, and that’s fantastic.

So, I address this last point to myself, more than anyone. If you think that great thing you want to do is impossible, make it your goal, and strive for it. It could just happen. And it definitely will if God wants it done.

1 Jul

On team, no one can hear you scream…

Actually, thats totally inaccurate. On team, everyone can hear you scream. Its a really handy way of getting attention, annoying people, and generally being weird. I could retroactively rewrite that, but I figure its an interesting title. Maybe.

So, I’m in a team! I’m sitting in a corner, in a church which has shockingly good internet access, and waiting for my drama team to come down from doing something else, so I figured I’d type a blog. We’re in Donaghadee, led by the… um… oddly posing guy below. He didn’t know I was taking that photo. Thats the way he normally stands, outside the girls bedroom. Yeah. The other pic should be the entire team. Ish. Adam hasn’t arrived yet, so we replaced him with a baby, temporarily.

I’ve been taking a few too many photos, and, just like when my dad did it, everyones getting slightly annoyed/murderous. I could stop…. but I don’t wanna.

Frankly, this team is one of the more interesting teams I’ve done, the group is pretty well bonded (though I’m worried the quiet one will eventually snap, but I always worry about that) though theres only 14? of us and we’re expecting at least 60 kids, all to fit in quite a small hall… FUN.

I hear Janine and Gillian so time to talk like a pirate. ARR. (The theme is pirates. Just in case you didn’t get that.)