1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
- 1. Respect for self
- 2. Respect for others
- 3. Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

Anyway, now that I feel more awake, and seen that my friends have been adding to their blogs, I figured I might as well add some of my thoughts out there into the big world wide web 2.0. Um.

I apologise that this will be a drawing-less post. I don’t have a scanner with me, and since I forgot the power supply for the main laptop, I can’t even use my tablet. Still, its given me a good opportunity to catch up with my sketchbooks, and indeed I have been spending the time redesigning some characters for a comic you may never see. Also to return to pixel art, not that I ever did much in the first place, but until I have a crochet hook all I can do is sketch with pencil and make pictures pixel by pixel with the netbook touchpad.

Here have some pixel “art”;

I wish I could figure out a way to export some of the animated sprites from a program I’m using so you can see hatwearer walking, but until then its just stills of these…things that I’ve previously uploaded to this blog in another post.

In the meantime I have been looking after some rather large puppies whom are almost adult sized and waiting for one of my best friends to return to Teesside, so that we can show off our ball dresses and look pretty.

1. I have, in the space of 2 days left my straighteners at my father’s, my main laptop’s power supply in Durham, and my brand new shockingly bright coat at my cousin’s house

I can no longer deny that I am not a part of democracy. Actually, I couldn’t do that before, but today feels like it’s on a grander scheme.

Yes. I voted. As I’ve said to others, I won’t be telling you who I voted for, but I’ll tell you that I’m ashamed that my first vote was such a challenge to pick. Since I wasn’t voting at home – I had been registered for Middlesbrough² I had to contend with Durham’s candidates. The campaigning styles of some made me reluctant to vote for the party whose leader I’d really like to see walk out of 10 Downing Street. It was a horrible balancing act of ‘my vote will count for’ against ‘but my values are’ against ‘but I don’t want someone like that representing the region’. So I’m not too happy, but at least I have voted, and that is that.

I can’t be the only one who is sat on the edge of my seat waiting for these results – even knowing it’s going to be quite some time before the results come in.

Anyway, might go do some maths. Revision is depressing,³ but revising maths makes me slightly happier. Failing that, I’ll try on the new boots I bought today, make myself a cup of tea, and watch some more Bobobo while eating nutella straight from the jar. Then I’ll pad out the dwarf and Halfling, and rewrite the first mini comic so that it’s actually funny. Oh procrastination.

And because a blog post isn’t a blog post on here without a picture;

Meet the Sparkly Good Fairy, sans lipstick. Whoops.

1. how do you tag things in this thing? seriously
2. but my housemate so kindly registered me at the Durham house without asking
3. and amplifies everything I dislike about myself

Then there was the detective one – but I need to do far more research on various things to do it with, mostly crimes and stuff.

Then I remembered my 2^nd earliest non-science fantasy story – the one about ghosts and angels in a world that was ravaged by war, and has only just began to return to normal. It’s almost 3 years old as a serious concept. I spent one of my summer holidays working on it to stop myself from becoming painfully bored of 3Ss holidays³ and now I think it might be the time to seriously do something with it. I posted up some comparisons of the 4 main characters from 3 years ago and how they look now; and the differences are minimal in one, and astounding in the other. Take a look for yourself:

Oh yeah, did I mention I have exams coming up? You could tell because I’ve been drawing instead of memorising derivations of how the galaxies aren’t bright enough compared to their masses because of dark matter and bound high velocity stars or something. Elliptical shapes from non-isotropic random velocity orbits and whatnot.⁴

But yes, this project is back on the brain, and I had better damn work on it after exams have ended.

1. http://lenkobiscuit.deviantart.com
2. Being half-race, I’m not quite sure where I fit in – too dark to be white, and too light to be black, and then that begs the question of where your primary loyalty lies – I personally think the answer is in friendships. No one cares what race you are in a friendship.
3. 3Ss: Sun, Sea, Sand – if you were wondering
4. I got 2.5/10 on a question for this module. I do not enjoy the maths for astronomy, I just like looking at the pretty stars and their spectral lines.

The trains are also insanely busy! Stupid volcanic ash, its all your fault! Here I was, gloating because it wouldn’t affect me, and it did. Ah well.

I’m almost home now.

There was nothing to suggest that things would potentially go wrong. Maybe finding an elderly couple in my seat would have been pushing it as a sign, but they left the next stop, and I had my seat, and everything was perfect and on time. Till we hit Doncaster. Cue 20 minutes delay, and me beginning to wonder if I’ll make it to my next train – but decided that yes, the time inbetween trains was sufficent enough, and then we left Derby, and came to a screeching halt.

Why? There had been reports of children on the line. Another 10 minutes delay added while they made sure the line was clear.

Instead of the lovely 35 minutes I would have had to grab lunch and get my next train, I had 3 minutes of running through Birmingham New Street, screaming ‘SORRY BUT EXCUSE ME!’ at poor people who were about to stroll into my path. I’d have paid money to see what that looked like. I did catch my train, although I was worse for wear once I’d managed to sit down. Poor guy next to me.

Still I’m in Southampton now. My niece is fast asleep, and my bro-in-law trying to keep himself occupied¹ until little niece wakes up, so we can go shopping for food.

Having looked at my timetable for heading back – it looks like I haven’t escaped the rushing. Waterloo to Kings Cross. 35 mins to do so, providing there’s no delays. 24 minute Tube journey. 5 minutes either side. Wish me luck.²

1. and amused by my speed of touch typing
2. I think I’ll really really need it.

It starts at 09:10. The station is 5 minutes away. My train leaves at 09:28. I’m taking my bags to the car when the massively lovable and yet extremely irritating oaf that is Charlie² will not come back inside. So its about 09:20 before we’re sat in the car, heading towards the station. Anyway, short story even shorter, I missed my train by about 30 seconds.³

Panic ensues. The station guards⁴ do all they can to help me out. They make me talk to East Coast, whom declare that because my train has left, the proof of purchase is now void⁵ and I have to buy a new ticket if I want to get to where I want to be later than expected and I don’t even have the chance to get a direct train for a full two hours. I know this is really how the advanced ticket things work, but I somehow, I still feel that East Coast could care less about customers once their trains have left the station.⁶

The station guards try talking to the guards on the next trains, who refuse to accept the ticket. So now, completely upset at the entire thing, play with the thought of not actually heading to Glasgow. Still, my dad, who had phoned earlier to see if I actually got on the train and then again to see what was going to happen next, agrees to pay me back for the new ticket⁷

So here I am, not even at my destination, £50 out of pocket, annd about to increase it a little bit more because I really want some tea and biscuits, and now have to head to the cafe bar.⁸

At least I’m going to attempt to get my moneys worth by taking full advantage of the Wi-Fi and sockets for computers and phones.

1. At least I’m keeping to my promise of trying to have a more interesting life in my 20s
2. A 6 month year old German Shepard puppy. Doesn’t look so puppy-like anymore.
3. The most irritating thing in the world – outside of other people – is missing a train by about one minute because all your clocks are set weirdly. Double-annoying if you’re like me and always book in advance.
4. You guys were so wonderful. This is why I love travelling from Darlington.
5. Basically: we have your money, and have had it for months now, fuck off.
6. Hi, would you like me to ride East Coast again, because Cross Country looks really really nice too you know.
7. since he felt at fault for not actually leaving a bit earlier.
8. Whatever happened to the standard class trolley service East Coast?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcHjAUhtSrk

Lets just say that things haven’t been smooth throughout February – although I’ve been perfectly fine on the day/s you’d have expected me to be at my worst – and only now do I feel like I’m recovering again. I don’t think my friends will ever read this, but if they do, I want them to know how thankful I am¹ that they put up with my whinings and self-esteem issues and remain there for me. Thank you.²

I did work on the two pictures below in the meantime though, and I do have some more images in the works, when I finally get around to finishing them!

One day I’ll have things that explain these characters. I swear!

Also, I have a sparkly ‘refurbished’ netbook with ‘minor cosmetic damage’³ so I really have no excuse now⁴. For those who like to know such things, it’s a Samsung NC10 in white. It looks like this;

and I am in love with it. It’s such a sweet little netbook, even other people have called it cute. So light and portable, I’ve been carrying it in my bad, and haven’t even noticed the extra weight much! With a 2GB main laptop, it does feel a little slow sometimes, but now with DropBox⁵ I can keep my university and project files up to date and backed up on a server, no matter which laptop I am on⁶.

Anywho, toodle-doo, sadly I have work to do!

PS: Happy 1st of March! Here’s to the best month of the year! Hawhaw.

1. even if I neglect to say it
2. I would also like to thank every guy who has been honest with me, and told me that I wasn’t attractive, rather than pulling the fleece over my head. Oh wait, that’s no one. Nevermind.
3. Two stickers that were easily removed with leftover things wiped off – so pretty much no cosmetic damage
4. as long as there is internet!
5. Oh my, I’m starting to sound like I’m being paid to plug things – trust me, I’m not!
6. Which you don’t realise is such a good thing until you actually start using it – and then you wonder why you ever thought of carrying USB pens with you