Not the greatest of Fridays especially seeing as I am lacking in sleep, and extremely irritable about everything. Which has lend me to do certain things I can’t be bothered stating. Boyz Noize is on tonight at Billboards and looks like everyone is probably going but I got my Dads 50th dinner tonight so no go plus work on Saturday.

Spent most of Thursday working on the bike but haven’t managed to finish putting in the exhaust and fuel tank due to complications bah. Wish my original engine was fine and was in my bike, all I’d have to worry about was getting new fairings then. I’ll have to post up a concept of what I’ll be looking at painting the bike as.

Mistakes are sometimes the best memories.
You are my favorite mistake.

Just finished a rather long last few days of work in terms of waking up around 4.30am – 5am for an early start and trying to recover from Tuesdays shift that saw me awake until 12.30am Wednesday and having to get up at 5am again. Pic below related. Very much a drainer and I’m not very fond of working at this present time, especially with having to find transportation to and fro where public services take up 1hr 30mins travel time – not fun.

I’ll hopefully have the bike fixed up Thursday (tomorrow), need to put the radiator, exhaust, and connect up the electrical cables and also remove one of the covers again which will be a pain. Hopefully it all pays off and I have something that functions which will allow me to invest into a set of new fairings based on a Honda CBR 600RR. I’ve got a design scheme in mind and just need to find out what the proper colour values to pick up at the shop are for the spray job which I might have a go at myself.

Waiting for a date to go for some further testing for the Fireighting preference which I think is holding up my overall application for the Defence Force. I’ve stopped eating Macca’s for at least the next three months to hopefully get fitter haha so I’ve just been having Don Don’s lately and the not so healthy Hungry Jacks in the morning *sad face*

Dads birthday was on Monday so we are having a pretty big party planned for him this Friday.

Haven’t really done any graphics related work lately, just random ideas and checking out some cool sites such as sixrevisions.com and graphicriver.net

Got some other stuff in mind but really tired of typing and thinking in general about it all. Will end with this saying:

A deceitful peace is more hurtful than open war

So whats happening around me. After getting Motorcycle Learners just a few weeks back I am now not too far from getting my Provisional Licence, I have been registered to a Defensive Driving course this Saturday. Not that I particularly feel like I need it, my mum decided it was a good idea and I am not complaining I am sure I will learn a few things that I cannot learn just by driving around.

Baseball wise, I am in a season break at the moment with my summer team not competing in the Finals. I am looking forward to my Winter season starting in April and pre season training end of March, my Winter club is my primary club with Summer being more of a training season, I like to think I have improved, I guess Winter season will tell me if that the case.

I have been busy with work this last few weeks, Finishing a project that took us quite a few months to build and will probably take us much more to improve. With the conclusion of this project come a new one which is a pretty big project in the planning.

That should be about it for a quick update.

The day started with horrible traffic as usual and I really miss having my CBR250 as I watched other motorcyclists whizzing by, arrived at 8.30am with some paper work promptly completed. We then proceeded to have a short Q&A session and an explanation of the day’s proceedings. Had a quick medical eye test and then did about a 1hr and 30mins of an aptitude test. Based on your results, several job opportunities become available. We then had to wait until a case manager took us in for an interview to see what we would be suitable as with advice and taking as much information about us as possible. It was in a way a 1st stage job interview of interest. Once that was completed, had to do some more paper work and was finally out just after 1pm.

So at it stands, I need to resubmit my job preferences in the Defence Force based on the knowledge of available options present thanks to the aptitude test. Two viable options I’m currently pondering are GSO (General Service Officer) which is becoming an ADF Officer and a Fire Fighter/Emergency Responder under the Royal Australian Engineers. Both are very different in how challenging it will be to achieve successfully.

The Fire Fighting role is hard to get not because many people apply for it but because there is limited positions available. So there could be 10 applicates but only 1 position where as the Officer role will require me to really know myself, strengths and weaknesses, the Corps, roles, policies as you will need to prove yourself in a selection board which has several high ranking Officers grilling you about anything.

So currently weighing the options out and hopeful that I will submit my choices before the week ends.

In other news though, Baptiste has resorted to cheating in our game of Scrabble via Facebook – noob. The slacker still hasn’t posted anything here either.

So I decided recently that it would be a good experiment to undertake, not to mention something different into my portfolio other than web design work. This would be my first vector portrait and hopefully it would turn out fairly well and I would know the art style I’d prefer.

I began by getting a photograph and polarizing it to get an idea of the different colour tones. From there I started creating an outline of the hands and face using the PEN tool.  Proceeded to detail the hands, face, then hat, hair and finally the shirt. Since I was missing my Wacom I ‘cheated’ slightly by taking some of the original photograph to help highlight the hair a little better instead of brushing/PENing every detail. Below is my workflow at different stages from start till finish. First ‘Vector Portrait’ completed.

The past two years since the original inception of this project with Baptiste I have managed to complete my two Diplomas of IT and Web Development (last June), a far cry from my original course a ‘Bachelor of Arts Multimedia’ but it’s a start. I have also tried to focus and understand what I want in life and the goals I’d like to put forward for myself, one of the questions was whether I do still have a passion for Web Development – hopefully that has been answered to an extent.

2010 is hopefully going to be a year where I do some life changing decisions and achievements that I can be proud of. My first and current task at the moment has been to acquire full time work. It wont be an easy task but this is something I’m going to work very hard to achieve with the help of my three plans. What are my three plans?

1. Get a Job in the IT/Web field: I’ve begun this process by applying to numerous firms and hopefully someone is willing to pick up a junior hard working chap (myself).
2. Join the Defence Force: This is actually a backup route if I don’t manage to find something by the time I do my YOU session and hopefully pass the interview and fitness stages. If all goes well with plan 1 I’ll be looking at a reserve position, otherwise I’ll be looking at 4 years service if I am successful.
3. MFB (Metropolitan Fire Brigade): Unfortunately last year I was unsuccessful in my initial application by 4 points in one of the aptitude sections. I’ll definitely be applying again but Im going to make sure when that time does come I’ll be better prepared and focused, as well as fit – hah!

So those are my plans for the next 5 years career wise. I’m hoping the each support each other if one falls through or else I’m screwed and heading back to the drawing board haha.

In terms of this site, I have plans to slowly ‘improve’ and give it a fresher feel. Small things such as updating the footer tree images to something similar to the plant and stream above. Also converting the code to HTML5 will be great experience, not to mention good experience with this new standard. See how we go.

It’s time for a fresh start and letting the past be the past, I’ve got a good future and according to a random Asian client at my current place of employment – good genetic material due to my surname, most importantly I feel I finally have my head screwed on.

Looking forward to what this year brings and welcome (back?) to webleveling!!

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