Recently I have been slacking a fair amount. I’ve been skipping work more than I certainly should, and being late quite a lot. I know this is very bad of me, and I’m very lucky that it hasn’t been mentioned by management, but it’s not entirely just down to being lazy. I have felt very drained lately, to the point where I just don’t feel like being at work. I’ve had enough of dealing with idiots, and people who feel the need to shout at me because their laptop is broken. At the end of the day I’m there to help them – it’s my job. What kind of a genuine bastard do you have to be to actually shout at someone you have never met about something that isn’t their fault? Along side this, by insomnia and my back have gotten a lot worse, especially in the past week.

I have had sleeping issues since I was born, in fact, before birth. I could never get into the routine of getting up at 7am, which I have had to do for practically my entire life. I could also never really get into the routine of going to bed early. Not after the age of 11 or so, at least. For as long as I can remember, it has taken me ages to get to sleep. Hours. I always remember going to my Nan & Granddad’s house at the weekend and being so envious of my Granddad and their dog because they could both drift off to sleep in a matter of seconds. When I turned 16, that’s when the real sleeping issues kicked in. I suppose that’s when I transcended from having a child’s sleeping pattern to an adult one. It started with me not getting tired until 1am, and having to be up at 7am to get to work. I used to have an alarm set at 7am (which was actually my PC plugged into my stereo, playing something unreasonably heavy and loud, which I would sleep through), then my Mum would shout my name every 30 seconds until about 7:25. At 7:30 I would be out the door, standing at the best stop, still unable to see. By the time the evening came I would be wide awake, regardless of the fact I’d only had 4 or 5 hours sleep. I wouldn’t be tired again until the early hours of the morning, and the cycle would repeat. After a few weeks of it being like this, I would feel very low and lifeless.

I saw the doctor about my sleeping issues and he prescribed me some sleeping pills, which had practically no effect on me. I just had to deal with it.

The sleeping improved a few months ago, but I think that went along with the excitement of living in a new house and having a new job. It’s the worst it has ever been, as  I won’t be tired until 3/4am now, and I’ll go to bed and sleep through my alarm and be late for work, or won’t go in at all.

I have also had an issue with my shoulder for a few years. When I spoke to the doctor about this he said it was an RSI and that I should concentrate on how I am sitting when using the computer. Three years on from now, and it has suddenly gotten a lot worse. Only in the past two weeks or so has my spine been hurting constantly, and clicks when ever I stretch. I’m actually in a lot of pain. I saw the doctor again recently about the sleeping issues and my back. I have been recommended to a physiotherapist because my spine is contorted into two shapes – an S shape vertically, and a V shape horizontally. Which basically means it arcs in and then out from top to bottom, and there’s a big arc at the center from left to right as well. The doctor didn’t know what to do about my sleeping, and I have to make another appointment for an analysis. He said that he didn’t have any stimulants that he could prescribe to help me sleep, as none of them are permanent, and each have horrible side-effects. He wasn’t too keen on the suggestion of prescription speed either – to keep me awake. In fact, he was very surprised when I said that my body has built an immune system to most over the counter caffeine stimulants such as energy drinks, and that I could drink one before going to bed at 5am and still get to sleep as I would (ab)normally.

Hopefully all of this will come to some kind of resolution, as I’m very tired of it – especially the constant back pains. I don’t want to be 20 years old with an 80 year old spine. I like my spine.

On another note entirely, I’m considering studying an MCSE. I’m just trying to calculate whether or not I can afford the £4500 loan to study the course, although a career development loan is an option. I realise you can purchase the material for £600, but the course offers the training, and they guarantee to put you in a job (earning £22,000 – £27,000/year) within 6 weeks of completion or your money back, which sounds like a good idea to me. Anyway, I had the phone interview for that placement yesterday, and I am one of 3 (out of 40) candidates who qualified, so providing I can get the funds, I’ll be going up in the world. It’d be nice to have a proper technical job.

Ah, it’s so very satisfying when – at the end of the post – you see your wordcount at the bottom of the WordPress post box, and you click the spell check button, just to see a nice message saying “No spelling errors found.”.

971 words, by the way.

My 20th birthday is approaching, which is somewhat scary (cue all of the people aged 30 or above to tell me how me how young I am). When I was young I used to ask (nicely) for a present or two for my birthday, and that would be combined with a day out or a birthday party with lots of friends. As I got older I used to get a few things, but asked for money, as my birthday isn’t long after Christmas, and I thought it would be nice to collect the money from various family members and buy myself something special. This is how it has been for a few years now.

When you have a job, though, getting money is a little bit different. I suppose if you are constantly in a financial battle then you appreciate money more than anything in the world, because you really need it – but if you have money to spare every month and things are alright, getting money is strange. It’s still nice, but strange.

Therefore, this year, I have decided to think of some things that I would like for my birthday, instead of a few bits of paper. Unfortunately the new eReader isn’t out in the UK yet, otherwise I’d just be asking for a digital heap of books. So, without dragging this out, here we go:

• iPod Classic Case
  As beautiful as the iPod is, it sure is prone to smudges and scratches. Plus the new iPod Classics don’t actually look that wonderful. The colours are a little dull.  I particularly like the “Soundtrack to My Life” one, with the upset panda – although I haven’t had chance to look through them all.
• iPhone 3G Case
  Similar to the iPod Classic, the iPhone is prone to scratches and smudges, and these cases are just awesome.
• Terratag T-shirts
  I love strange and beautiful t-shirts, because they’re something that you put to use quite frequently. Electrik Eyes and Robot Rock are my favourite.
• Geek T-shirts
  Carrying on with the whole t-shirt thing, I love geeky t-shirts!
• Pendulum In Silico T-shirt
  I didn’t manage to get this t-shirt when I saw them live, and I only just remembered that I want one.
• Download 2008 T-shirt
  I couldn’t afford a Download t-shirt when I was there, and I’d like one of these too.
• Razer Mouse Surface
  Because I’m tired of using my mouse on a cardboard box, and want that ultimate precision!
• Enermax Aurora
  My old one broke, and I miss it so much. Typing isn’t the same without it.
• iPod Dock
  There’s just something nice about having a designated place for your iPod to stand when it is plugged in.
• USB Card
  It’s always handy to carry a USB drive around with you, in case you need to save something or take something, but they’re so easy to lose or damage. The USB cards slide snugly into your wallet, so you don’t have that issue. Personally I’d grab one that was 2GB or more.
• Boots
  Nobody but the military make decent boots anymore, and I’ve not had a new pair for years. Size 8 (I think), please.
• Hookah (not to be mistaken for hooker)
  Smoking is bad, smells and gives you cancer. Hookahs are good, taste nice and smell great!
• Wallet
  I still have the same wallet I bought when I was 14. It’s a bit ripped and silly now.
• Xbox 360 Memory Card
  For portable gaming!
• Xbox Live Points
  There is plenty of downloadable content and arcade games that I would like to get.
• Super King Size Duvet
  I’ve got a king size one, but my new duvet covers are too big for it. Plus I’d like a nice thick one for the cold!
• Pillows
  The four I have are torn and flat, and you don’t sink into them when you lie down.
• Breast implants
  Just for fun!

I’ve no idea what my plans are this year. I’ll probably complain about being old, eat a lot and drink an excessive amount, which is what everybody should do on their birthday!

When did lunch get so rubbish? Lunch used to be a time of entertaining breaks with colleagues where you would sit down and share stories, watch an episode of Family Guy and remind yourself of what the outside world is like. Now it’s a time of prancing about in shops, avoiding the weather and doing exactly the same thing you do when it isn’t lunch time - browse the Internet.

My lunch time varies from day to day, as does everyone elses here, so it’s quite hard to naturally hang out with a friend or colleague, because you’re not sure when they are going to be on lunch either.

Regardless of that, lunch time should be spent eating delicious food. Many people bring their delicious food from home, however that involves both making it and bringing it. I’ve tried that, but I’m both lazy and forgetful, either of which result in me being hungry. So, my lunch time usually begins with me trotting off to Sainsbury’s, which is five minutes away. Upon entering the shelved kingdom, I immediately head to the right aisle (it’s a Sainsbury’s local, so don’t think of a huge supermarket) and look at the various bread products. Who the fuck makes these? Let’s look at an example selection:

• Cheese and pickle
• Chicken salad
• Ham salad
• Tuna & mayonnaise
• Tuna & sweetcorn
• BLT
• Egg mayonnaise
• Prawn mayonnaise

Any of those sound familiar? I thought so. They’re the typical sandwich counter choices, and they’re absolute rubbish. Any of the ones that come with salad can go and fuck themselves, because honestly, by salad they mean “lettuce (which is composed mostly of water and paper), tomato and cucumber”. Tomato and cucumber are just designed to make bread soggy; that’s their only function! Their texture doesn’t suit sandwiches, and they just ruin the experience. Lettuce is okay, but it’s not vital. BLT is quite popular, and it sounds quite nice, but you’re essentially eating cold, wet meat with a nice sloppy serving of cold, wet bread. Satisfying.

What I want to know is, what happened to the people who eat normal sandwiches? What happened to peanut butter and jam? Marmite? Banana and crisps? Marmalade? All of the various meat-feast sandwiches I’ve cooked up in the past? I’m going to start a sandwich company called Sandwination. It’s going to sell normal sandwiches to normal people. They will be cheap sandwiches. No more than £1.50, and on the back they will simply state:

“A normal sandwich for a normal person. This sandwich wasn’t made using the best bread, the best butter or the best knives. You’re a normal person, you shouldn’t care about such things. The entire intention of this sandwich is to provide you with a low-price product that leaves you satisfied.”

Following that will be an itemisation of costs explaining how much the customer paid for each product in the sandwich (“bread – 8p, butter – 11p”, etc.) so that people can appreciate why the sandwich costs what it did.

I’m tired of having to choose between tuna sandwiches that are suffering a mayonnaise drought, and other sandwiches that have runny bread. I want a fucking jam sandwich for lunch. This is a sandwich revalation, sandwich imagination, sandwich nation.

Sandwination.

Can fuck off. It’s an irritating clothes shop that has clothes rails positioned too close together, causing all kinds of havoc to be spread across the floor when the women who have 6 children side-by-side in a push chair head to the “discount” section at the back of the shop.

Hello. I don’t think I’ve ever started a post with a tangent before. Well, new year, new web host, new design (!), new way of starting a post. As you can see (unless you’re blind, in which case you’ll probably be covering your ears as your screen reader enunciates my poorly nested code) I have changed the design of this once again.

I was only sticking with the default theme for lack of anything better, as I just can’t stand pre-made templates these days. Unless it’s my code, I don’t want to use it. Your messy code can go pleasure itself – sexually.

A few things need to be cleared up here and there, but overall everything is working wonderfully. It even renders somewhat acceptably in Internet Explorer, which is something of a miracle given I gave that pile of filth absolutely none of my attention. Not even an !important tag was typed. Not one.

I have to pay a huge thanks to Craig, who directed me to Facelift, which dynamically generates image representations of defined text. Basically, those lovely headings that you are seeing used to be text, but thanks to Facelift, images with that lovely font were dynamically generated.

Disqus is running nicely, so all I need to do now is fix the archives and perhaps post some more. I hope you all (all four of you) had a wonderful new year.

I have now installed Disqus on this website. I have installed it on a few of the websites I administrate now, and a few others that I visit regularly use it as well.

Disqus basically takes over the comments system of a website and synchronises all of the data with the Disqus website. On the Disqus website you have a community for your website (www.yourwebsite.disqus.com) where people can see content. Your site might occasionally be featured on the Disqus website if there is a post that becomes quite popular, which obviously brings more traffic.

It also allows you to easily see which websites you’ve commented to have new comments (if you make a Disqus account), and allows you to receive e-mail notification or phone notification. It has tonnes of features.

Check out the Disqus website at www.disqus.com, create an account maybe. You’ll no doubt find lots of blogs to explore on there! Hey, you could even try it out and leave me a comment.

Edit: I’ve temporarily removed Disqus due to some issues with the installation on this website. Unfortunately, whilst it installed fine on two other websites on my server, there were some issues with this website synchronising. Hopefully this will be resolved soon.

Edit: Having contacted Disqus, they fixed the issue with importing my comments, so I have once again enabled Disqus.

I have now been blogging for (just over) 3 years. Yay! …

Well, you may have noticed there has been some downtime of late. You may have also noticed how much faster the website is. Basically, after having speed issues with my web host at the time (Dreamhost), I decided to check out the 1 week free trial of the private server. The free trial basically moved my account from a computer shared by 50 people, to a computer shared by not many at all, and gave the access to change the amount of memory my server had. I was looking at spending about £30/month on the private server, which was £20 more than I was already paying.

Unfortunately the private server turned out to be worse than the shared hosting, so after 5 days of messing with it, I requested to be moved back to shared hosting, because obviously I wasn’t going to pay £20 more than what I was paying for a worse quality server, and I wasn’t going to pay the £80 or so per month that I would have had to pay for the private server to be up to the required standards.

I contacted Dreamhost, asking to be moved back to shared hosting, and they said that they were unable to move me back until I was using less than 200MB of RAM, because that is too much to be using on shared hosting. I informed them that nothing had changed on any of my websites, and if I was using 200MB of RAM then, then I would have been using it before. Dreamhost said that this was indeed the case, but they didn’t realise this was the issue, and apparently I was causing downtime issues for other people hosted on that shared server at the time.

I went through insane amounts of shell commands, monitoring CPU usage and memory usage, and was unable to find any scripts that were using so much memory, so after one final request (I really like Dreamhost and their control panel) I decided to think “oh fuck it”, and found another web host. I’m very annoyed by this, because I’ve had to do a stupid amount of maintenance and fiddling to get everything back up and running.

I have now moved to This* (ThisWebHost) and they are wonderful. They’re a very small (but growing) company with very fast servers. They’re very polite, helpful and responsive, and whilst I really wasn’t looking forward to going back to using cPanel software, which is pretty much standard for hosting these days, I’m really glad I made the move.

Dreamhost are now insisting that I pay for 4 days worth of private server usage, because obviously I had to back up all of my stuff and change DNS settings before I could close the account, which is very annoying. I’m not sure whether I’ll pay them or not.

Anyway, if you are thinking of changing web hosts, I certainly recommend This*, as they have been truly fantastic. If you do decide to sign up, use my affiliate link so that I get a small bonus. Also, don’t forget to enter “LAUNCH” as a promotional code to get 25% off of your first bill.