I'm still around...really!

Yes, yes, I am still alive, regardless of what anyone else says. So it's been 5 stupidly long months since I last posted anything onto my main Blog. Would you like to know why? BECAUSE I HAVE HAD NOTHING TO TALK ABOUT!. Actually, that's a lie, I have a lot to talk about, I just can't be bothered type up everything I have been doing. 6 more weeks of this term, then I'll officially have no more lessons, at least, for the rest of this year, but I'll be thrown into the big world, and funnily enough, the start of my life. Maybe I'll actually write more stuff on this Blog!

Eh, who am I kidding, none of that will ever happen. But honestly though, I started this post late February and now it's mid March, that's how lazy I've become with blogging. I really used to like it, it could just be that GM Dave is stopped posting things regularly because of his new baby daughter. He used to motivate me. Him and his Jormungand. I miss those days. But I get the impression that I should have been more social in my first and second years because now I'm starting to regret meeting some relatively cool people so late into university, you know? I'm starting to wish I'd met these guys sooner. I feel that I wont be seeing them again after our exams are finished. Unfortunately, there's nothing that I can do about it, as much as I hate it. But the world is strange and mysterious place, and I believe that we'll see each other again, in the close or distant future, but never say never.

But I feel it's relevant to do a shout out to some of my Uni friends who have actually made my 3 years possibly the best 3 years of my life.

Andre and Faolan, we're the Leicester boys, traveling together, joking together, me and my constant 1-liners. I've seen you guys change, for the better, I've always enjoyed watching your music videos, keep it up, I'll keep watching and rooting.

The Dans, Ali, Nat, Jo and Tomasz. Sadly, I only met you guys this year, I really wished we knew each other earlier, more things we could have done together. To Nat and Tom, you guys were awesome for helping me with my film, which as I speak is around 70% done. You made concessions for me, and I'd easily do the same for you guys. Ali, this is going to sound weird, but I've known you longer than two weeks! I'm obviously messing around with the whole 2 week thing, but I'm glad you're a Leicester girl, so we wont be far apart, at least for a while. Jo, I do actually think you're a sweet person, you're an absolute delight to converse with, I can't wait to see you around during your master's year! The Dans, I just think it's sheer awesomeness that you both have similar qualities to each other, I mean, I know people with the same birthday as me, but not the same names and possibly personalities!

Kelly, Jamie, Zeem, Tom and Adam. I pretty much met you guys at the beginning of this year, so it hasn't been all too bad, you guys are a barrel of laughs and I'm thankful to Kelly for introducing me to you. Also Kelly, I'm glad we are friends, and strangely enough, have a lot in common (I.E Kingdom Hearts, Manga, Pokémon etc etc :D) there aren't many people I know with similar interests.

Liam, Arielle, Jenkins and Sam. We ARE the Confetti crew, and always will be. If it wasn't for you guys, I probably would have stayed in my shell, but you gave me confidence, in myself and others. Being in Nottingham and going to Confetti have definitely got some of the most memorable moments. Market Square? I'm there! You know you loved it. No 7up? Whiskey please! Mc Donalds? No, we go to WHIMPEY, like REAL people! We're hardcore like that. Damn Women? me and my occasional grammatical errors, I obviously meant Damn Woman, but even so, even saying this sentence was a spur of the moment thing.

And the last for now: Spencer and Joe. I don't care whether you think this sounds gay or not, but I absolutely fucking love you guys. Seriously, never have I had an absolute horrendous amount of fun with the amount of fucking around, drinking, taking the piss out of each other, funny ass conversations, copious amounts of "your mum" no matter how far you took it (looking at you Joe, making a facebook named "Chris' Mum".) You were also the first people I ever talked to when I started Confetti. I know all you wanna do is have a laugh with me all the time, but every now and again, lay off the mum jokes aye? They're only 2 years old. The best way to keep a running joke alive is by not using it so much. And pretty much what I said about Ari, Sam, Liam and Chris, you helped me come out of my shell, and I thank you.

I know there's a lot of names I haven't mentioned or said anything about, but honestly, this post has been going on long enough, so I'll give it a rest until next time. Until then good luck to everyone with their studies and coursework.

Thank you, g'nigh, mach lav.

I'm not dead, I can assure you!

I'm NOT DEAD as I can assure you! (To those who don't actually know me), but honestly, I just haven't had time to really update my blog as often as I used to, which sucks, because I actually do like blogging. But with everything that is coming up in my final year of university, It's gonna be hard to update this a lot.

In my last post, I mentioned video logging, but I doubt that I'll even be bothering with that anymore, or at least, for the time being.

As for my final year, here is what I have to do:

Term 1:
Maya Render assignment
Do most of my project report and start getting actors for my film
Start working on my Advanced Imaging Tech workbook and my general techniques
Finish my treatment and start looking into techniques into how to create the "teleport" effect used in Jumper

And THAT is only in term one, but thankfully, I'm on top of most of that, so I'm not entirely worried about anything at the moment.

In terms of gaming though, yes I'm still playing FFXI, have been for the past 5 years! I know right? FIVE YEARS. To be honest though, I really can't get enough of it. Unlike a lot of my friends, when it comes to computer games, especially RPGs, once I start one, I wont stop until I feel some sort of self-satisfaction, which is why I'm still playing things like star ocean 4 hell, even Star ocean 1 and 2, I even feel like buying Star Ocean 3 when get the chance purely because I didn';t play it as much as I probably could have when I borrowed it off my best friend.

As for FFXI, things have changed IMMENSELY. It's so weird that level 75 isn't the highest level anymore, now I'm level 85 BLU and DRG, still need to work on NIN, aint bothered with RDM at this time and DRK I'd like to get to 75 at least. But thanks to Lorddraco, I managed to get my DRK from 67 > 69 (close to 70) in Abyssea and made more progress in one night than I did in a few months, however, most of my DRK's skills are extremely gimp, like for say, I have 206 Scythe skill at the moment, and I'm MEANT to have 230 something at 69. Yeah...

But like, in terms of University, things have been great apart from my loan not coming through yet! Since my loan hasn't come through just yet, I took the liberty to spend time on some of the programs that I'm using like after effects and Maya. I really like after effects! I've been looking at the stuff that you can do on it and it just looks amazing, so I've been watching tutorials on youtube and stuff.

But for now, I'm still working on my treatment, I'll try and write another post later in the week, so if anyone who reads this is still out there, I hope you're still alive and still following!

Video logging?

I'm thinking about it folks.

But if I do, it'll be during the next year.

Then i've got to think about what I want to Vlog.

Then i'll start doing it :).

Can't be bothered.

Seriously, after all of yesterdays troubles.

I can't be bothered to edit this news piece.

Sure, I can slap together a few bits of footage and call it my feature story, but it wont be anywhere near as good as my hard news story.

Well, thats how I feel.

I've been here at Confetti since 12:30, and all i've mostly done is youtube and facebook.

But mainly, my reasons for not being bothered are:

• I want to really finish off my film and audio work.
• News... just isn't in me i'm afraid, sorry Jen, it just isn't.
• Somehow my DV tape that had the footage on got damaged.

...

Huh?

My DV got damaged?

Who?

When?

How?

Funny that, i've had my tape in its case in my bedroom for 3 weeks, how did it get damaged? I don't remember exposing it to light or anything.

I believe that all technology have their own little minds and find the opportune moment to really pi$$ you off. It seems to be true, too many "unexplained" things have happened in this world.

Well, at least I have Monday and Friday to look forward to. Next week is gonna be a CRAZY week.

Well... bugger me

I don't think you guys know yet, but as part of my second year, I am doing a news Module where I am given 3 weeks to research, script, film and edit a news story. And then I have to make 5 news story categories and put them into one whole news package.



Anyway, 2 weeks have passed since we were given this 3 week assignment.



Now i'm on my last week.



...with nothing filmed or edited.



Good going Chris, procrastination ftl.



My only reason for not getting this news story filmed is mainly week 2 where I was doing this podcast for trent FM.



Oh dears! Not a good time to choose to do a podcast now is it?


But now that I have been put in this really tight situation, i've now only got a week left to film, interview and film all of the footage I need to edit to hand in for Monday.

Not to mention that i've barely started my Genre Essay... Not that its hard, but still, the fact that i've barely made an effort is rather... sad?

I only have 2 more weeks to hand in everything!

Anyway, back onto the subject.

So yesterday, I was looking through news article after news article to find something to do my feature news story on. After looking for 2 days and not seeing anything that particularly interests me...

BAM!

I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. Leicester's Bowstring Bridge. PERFECT!

The bridge is quite close to where I live, so getting GVs is easy. Even phoned up Stuart Bailey and got an interview easily.

At the time I was thinking "Oh my god! This is awesome!". As i've clearly expressed, I was very happy.

Then after that, Wednesday just seemed to turn extremely weird from there...

The first thing was forgetting to take the kit I booked out with me (!?), I only remembered after I bought some KFC and my news story came across my mind, and my exact thought was:

"I could have sworn I was meant to carry more than this..."

So I headed back to confetti to pick up my kit. Weird, because i've never forgotten kit that i've booked out... so I thought that was the worst of it over.

No.

Such.

Luck.

For THURSDAY just took the piss.

In a list, this is how Thursday went, from 12:00.

2:00: Finally decided to log off FFXI after doing Salvage.

2:01: Just realised that I hadn't watched Waterloo Road. So decided to watch it.

2:59: Waterloo Road finished and then decided to watch Bleach... and didn't. So I watched =3 instead.

4:30: Fell asleep, well, i'm sure I fell asleep around this time. Yes, I watched =3 for an hour and a half.

8:30: Wake up reasonably late, considering I wanted to be up at 7:30...

9:20: Leave my house to catch the bus to the train station.

9:54: Arrived just outside of the station, keep in mind, this is when the train LEAVES the station.

When all hope was lost, I decided to wait for the next train, then find out the train I wanted was actually delayed, and I was minutes from missing the delayed train.

10:05: JUST made it to the train, and even though I was partially late for my interview, I thought everything would be okay.

10:15: MADE IT to Loughborough (you didn't know before, so you do now), now for the easy bit, to get to-

To get to-

???

OH F^*K! I completely forgot where I was going and lost my sense of direction. Not to mention I neglected to print off a map.

Yeah...i'm never doing that again.

Okay, to this point, I really DO feel like I have rambled on FAR too much and too the point where I feel I may be boring you guys. I'll continue this in another post another day, for now, I shall do my scripting.

...yeah.

Fooking Limbus.

Right, my first FFXI rant for a while.

I love how people make out that my luck is generally sh*t when it comes down to Limbus. But you know, its just my poor choice in the decisions I make. I also love how people blame me for stuff that usually isn't my fault.

My biggest mistake in the whole time in playing FFXI was leaving my original Limbus shell to join my best friends Limbus shell.

Now I bet you're asking yourself "How is this bad? You're getting to play with your best friend". That wouldn't have been such a problem if he didn't change his mind like the wind. We did limbus for about 2 months, then we decided to go back and join Ephorate, my old linkshell.

Because my friend decided the linkshell wasn't going anywhere.

Now incase you guys don't play FFXI, i'll explain what a linkshell or 'shell or LS is.

If you've played other online games, then its most comonly called a Guild.

If you've never played an online game or game whatsoever before and just reading this, then:

A linkshell is like a room of people, but you can't physically see anyone, you can just see what they type. They're used for all kinds of stuff such as social chatter, setting up events, and if people are nice, they usually give you advice/help.

Limbus is an event you can do once every 3 days (yes, 72 real life hours) that involves doing a few 4-6 different zones that consist of 1-6 floors filled with monsters that you have to kill, and after doing the last floor in these zones, you get a chest which gives you a chip to do the central areas to kill Omega and Ultima. These zones are split up between two different zones that drop different armour sets, Temenos is where Ultima resides and drops Nashira gear, where as Apollyon is where Omega resides and drops the Homam gear.

Anyway, back to what I was saying earlier. It was a mistake that I left because I didn't get anywhere.

At all.

I might have aswell stayed in my old linkshell, but get this:

ALL of my points I originally had were all removed. Ok, I'm fine with that I guess, I did leave the LS after all. But Posty kept all the points he had after moving servers for 3 months and coming back.

???

What?! So wait, they drop all my points for leaving for another shell, but Posty keeps all his points after moving servers? What the f^*k people, What the f^*k.

But i'm past that I guess. I'll just mention it the next time someone does it.

What i'm not past is that ever since I joined AGAIN i've STILL yet to have ANYTHING from the LS, and its been nearly a year and a half. And not to mention you're not allowed to get someone to do Limbus for you.

"Luck of the Draw" Fullen? F^*k off. Its thanks to Whiney little B*st*rds (Madawc >_>) and leaders trying to resolve things that THIS HAS HAPPENED.

So you see, in this kind of event, I'm going to be top of the list for Homam FOREVER! Which makes no sense if they keep doing runs on days I can't actually be there. And its not like they don't know about it either.

I might be sounding a bit selfish, but wouldn't it make more sense for them to do a run where most people turn up?? The only reason why I can't turn up on Mondays is because University Clashes with Limbus, and Real life is far more important. Also, logging on at the train station is a No No, not because I can't or don't want to, its just plain silly.

But hold on folks, that isn't the best bit.

The best bit is that I WAS RIGHT ABOUT WHAT WAS GONNA DROP.

2 feet
1 body

I always have a gut feeling that if something I want that i'm up for drops when i'm not there, it WILL drop.

And I can garuntee that this will happen again.

What the awesome?

Hey guys, you probably may have noticed, but I changed the name of my blog. I actually changed it months ago, but I thought i'd mention just incase. Before it was called "The Days of FFXI" and I called it that because it was going to be a dedicated FFXI blog. However, because of me playing FFXI a lot less than I used to and also doing a lot less on game than I used to, I figured since theres a lot I actually do in real life that I kinda take for granted, I thought it would be a good idea to slightly change the name of my blog and also change the content posted on this blog when I actuallly get round to doing so.

The Mishaps and Rants of A Student Gamer.

As you could probably tell from the title, i'm a university student.

If not, then you know now :).

I also usually have a lot of stuff that I can rant on about or tell about FFXI or University.

Things have hit me such as:

• Finding a new love interest.
• Being drunk with friends is extremely funny.
• That i'm going to miss my friends after this year is done :(.

Back in the day, when I was still at school, Billy Jones had to be one of the funniest people i've EVER encountered in my whole life. I mean, I KNEW funny people, but he put all of them to shame....

Then I met Spencer, Joe, Sam, Jenkins and Liam.

...

What has my life been without these guys?

Mabye my original concepts towards laughter were much different back then? Or mabye my sense of humour has changed since then?

I have to say, I don't think my late teens/early adult hood would have been ANYWHERE NEAR as awesome without them. Why? They are just that damned good.

Joe is like another version of Billy, with his "your mum" jokes, and general behaviour just cracks me up ALL THE TIME!

How does he do it? Even when I went to his 21st birthday thingy-ma-jig he just said a whole bunch of stuff that I would NEVER have thought he'd say that would have me absolutely PISSING MYSELF!

I can't remember what exactly, since I was drunk and took an interest to one of his friends.

You know the one <3.

Then theres Spencer. Jesus, him and Joe are the perfect comedy pair. Sort of like Ant and Dec, but are actually FUNNY AND COOL!

When Spencer isn't around Uni, I feel like theres a hole where my heart used to be because I feel so... lost.

No, i'm not gay, stfu.

Anyway, I should really be working on my Essay/Treatment. I'm going to make sure I keep posting regularly now :).