MyNoWriMo Update

Just a quick updatre on the status of MyNoWriMo.net I’ve started development work on it. Kinda… I’ve finally managed to get access to the databse that it’s going to be run on, and I’ve created the base tables that I will need to start development.

I’ve got a hectic week ahead of my so it will be at least a week before I actually start coding up the interface code for it however here are the features I plan to support in the first iteration:

1. Create a user account.
2. Log in with user account.
3. Start a project.
4. Add a word count for project.
5. View project status.
6. Search users
7. Add user as friend
8. Become Fan of Authors work

I’ve got a few other ideas.

For the uninitiated MyNoWriMo.net is my attempt at making a platform for people to do what NaNoWriMo lets you do but at any time during the year. I’ve got a few Ideas that will hopfully make it stand out, but the main goal is to give people a place where they can have a public target that they can work towards.

It’s looking like MyNoWriMo will be developed in PHP, because that is what my web hosting company supports, It may not be at first written in very good PHP as I’m not a PHP developer, I’m evaluating AJAX frameworks at the moment, leaning towards jQuery, assuming I can find a good charting libray for it, otherwise I’ll use the charting in Dojo, which I have had experience writing code in.

Fire in Renfrew

Fire in renfrew 3, originally uploaded by Ohmzar.

It seems that Renfrews annual burning comes a little early this year…

About this time last year I reported that there was a fire in renfrew, well once again there is anouther fire over there, this one not as visible from this side of the river.

If you look at the image the site of last years fire is about a third of the way from the left.

I think that the fire this year is at the same dump as the fire this year, just a different part.

Update:

Here is a BBC Article about the fire that might have more details other than something is burning, which lets be honest is all I’ve said here…

Bloomsbury Give-away



Bloomsbury GIvaway, originally uploaded by Ohmzar.

I won a book from Bloomsbury books on twitter I had no idea what the book was about. Only that I cold wini t by quickly emailing their marketting department.

The note says “Congratulations, Keep following uson twitter.” I think I’ll use it as a book mark for when I read the book.

From glancign at the cover and my memory of a quick review of the book on Amazon that I read two weeks ago, the book is about Catherine Hubbard, a woman who’s life is falling apart who inherits her grandmother Georgia’s house in Vermont.

When gets there she finds her grandmothers diaries while cleaning the attic, revealing the true story of Georgia (Her grandmothers life).

Reading the life of somone who is separated from her by a generation, apparently the things that are seen as Taboo by her grandmother but are completely normal to Catherine make it a surreal journey, or some such.

Whe I get round to reading this I’ll post an actual review based on more than the back cover.

Story Idea: 100 Times

I basically dremt the entire plot to a horror movie last night. The basic premise was that somone cursed a neighborhood so that anyone who performed any action 100 times would die.

I don’t remember much more about the dream other than that the only way the curse could be lifted was by killing the person who had raised it. Which lead to mobs of people accusing each other of being the person who raised the curse, and killing each other.

People also had to avoid repetition in their actions because if they did anything too often they they’d die. I can’t remember exactly what the dreams definition of a thing was.

In my dream it turned out that the curse had been raised by some kid who with an electric guitar (I love the way dreams give you so much detail in for some things but the most absurd things can also just make sense) I think we found another way to lift the curse I cant remember.

There were other sinister things going on like there was a woman with loads of kids and she was using them to experiment on the cause of the curse, I think in the dream she was Indian but I’m not sure (Go my rascist subconscience and it’s adherance to stereo types)…

The rest of the dream is a bit fuzzy im my memory now, and I think it’s intermingled with another dream I had about the army invading the neighborhood I live in and the whole neighborhood turning out to be a test bed for experimental super soldiers…

The dream has just given me an idea for a satyrical game show though… Just a minute: extreme you have a minute to talk on a subject and if you repeat yourself or hesitate you die…

Anyway, I thought I’d blog it as the premise of a curse that killed anyone who did anything 100 times sounded interesting.

Voltron Star Shooter

Voltron Star Shooter, originally uploaded by John Kratz.

Screw my 500D I want one of these! It’s a Voltron figuring that transforms into an SLR camera!

When I was I kid I used to love Voltron and I would have killed for this. The top part is (was) a working film camera, albeit not SLR and the SLR lens is a fake.

Come to think of it maybe I think I’ll stick with the 500D… But if this was digital I’d be there…

This reminded me of reflector a set of three transformers who joined together to form a camera, I remember it being a send away for toy int he 80s, I had it but I think I broke it 🙁
Day 82! - We Are Reflector (September 4, 2007)

Microman Micro Robo Camera Robo

Plastic 52: Week 37

Also some people have put up some amazing photoshopped camera robots on flickr like this one:
Camera Transformers

And this one

Birthday Yayness!

It was my birthday yesterday, at work I was embarressed by a crowd of people coming into my bit of the office and singing happy birthday to me, which was fun, I even got a card.

We had a lovely evening wondering through the park and then to Morrisons for supplies, then Annabel cooked dinner. She cooked duck in a a sweet honey sauce, with potatoes, beans and asparagus… It was amazing! She can cook more often from now on 🙂

After that we watched the Golden Compass.

Annabel got me some amazing presents including Absolute Sandman Volume 2, Watchmen (The comic not the movie), Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty for the PS3 (Pirate Robots Yarrr), The Prince of Persia Game for the Xbox 360, and the first disk of Death Note. I think she went a little crazy… But apparently shopping for somone else is just as fun but guilt free.

I’ve only had a chance to play Ratched and Clank because by that point we wanted to do something quick and simple before bed, it’s quite fun, and more challenging in parts than I would expect, I might have to invest in Tools of destruction if I see it going cheap.

I also found out that my birthday yesterday marked the first Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Day maybe I should look for a new profession, the only reason I do what I do at the moment is because I feel obliged to because i share my birthday with Alan Turing.

The Chef with her masterpiece:
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We also had cake with a million candles:
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Which looked pretty when Lit:
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And unfortunately a little blurry while being blown out…

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Must remember that if I like Death Note I’ve seen the complete box set quite cheap on Amazon here:

Camille O’Sullivan: Theatre Royal Glasgow (Sun, 14th June)

I’ve been exploring new music lately using last.fm and some how this lead to me finding out that there was a gig by some half Irish half French Cabaret singer called Camille O’Sullivan, I think I’d been listening to the either the Cabaret or Dark Cabaret tag having moved on from listening to the Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I decided that as Annabel and I would have been going out for 4 years on the 4th of June that it would be nice to do something and having previewed Camille’s material on youtube I figured why the hell not. So I told Annabel to make sure she wasn’t doing anything on the 14th and booked the tickets. I refused to tell Annabel what we were goign to see, and she didn’t know what was going on till Camille walked onto stage and started singing. I was a bit nervous becase I wasn’t entirely sure that:

A. Camille was any good.

B. That Annabel would enjoy the show.

My fears were thrown to the side when Camille came on stage and started singing, she has an amazing voice, and is a great show-person. She mixes serious themes with the absurd, some of her songs had me laughing at the bizzarre humour, others were deeply touching. With a Powerful voice and an amazing set of songs Camille blew us both away.

Having never heard of Camille before we went to the Gig I can’t really reconstruct the setlist, a few highlights were the haunting Look Mummy (No Hands) originally written by Fascinating Aïda, The hilarious in these shoes by Kirsty MacColl, and Hurt originally by Nine Inch Nails but recently covered by Johnny Cash.

All in all the show was amazing and we plan on going to see her again when she plays the fringe later this year, in case you are curious here are some Youtube videos of her shows:

In these shoes:

Look Mummy (No Hands):

Hurt:

DSLR Madness…

Canon EOS 500D

I’m getting a DSLR for my birthday, so I’ve been spending my free time researching photography. I’ve never had a proper camera before so it’s a bit intimidating.
I’ve found some very good tutorials on the DigitialPhotography School though.

I’m going to have to re-upgrade my flicker account to Pro, and start uploading photo’s, I have some time though as despite it being my birthday today I wont be getting the camera till my parents arrive in early August.

I’ve always wanted to take up photography as a hobby but I’ve never had a good enough camera, so I asked my parents for some money towards a 2nd hand camera for my birthday this year.

Next thing I knew they phoned me up to ask me if I’d heard of the EOS 500D but got my answering machine, by the time I called them back they told me they’d already bought it… I told them it was crazy and that they’d spent too much money, but apparently they got a good price. I’m not complaining, it’s an amazing camera I’m in fact flabberghated as I’d been expecting to have a 350D or at best a 400D, the 500D is the highest end entry level camera Canon do, and it’s almost got all the features of the 5D which is thier first semi-pro camera…

Anyway the upshot of this is that when I get my camera I’ll be posting the odd photo here, mainly ones that I am especially proud of, but I’ll also probably be doing some photo projects to get my skills up to scratch.

Story Idea: What ever happened to the end of the world?

I went to a Camille O’Sullivan Gig on Sunday with Annabel, and one of her songs put a short story idea in my head.

It was her song 5 Years, which is off of the album Live at the Olympia. Basically the premise for the story is that 5 years ago something happened that meant that humanity that the end of the world would be in 5 years time, there was nothing that could be done about it, the world was just going to end in 5 years. The Story would be from the point of view of a survivor of the chaos, retelling what happened over the past 5 years.

There is a twist which should be obvious, but in case it’s not I’ll not go into it.

On another note expect a review of the Gig in a later blog post, I may try to ressurect some of my old gig reveiw blog posts from when I was a “Freelance Event Technician” or Roadie. They are sitting in the databse of my old blog which has since been scrapped.

Relay for Life

I’m participating in the Relay for Life this Friday/Saturday, And I’d thought I’d give you the opportunity to sponsor me.

A group of my friends and I will be taking turns to walk around a track in East Kilbride (Just outside Glasgow) for 24 hours all proceeds got to Cancer research. I think it’s tax deductable too or something, although that’s not really a good reason to do it.

It starts at 6pm so I’ll be heading there after work on Friday so by the end of it I will have been up for at least 36 hours, and I don’t plan on sleeping while I’m there.

If you want to put a couple of pennies towards it, just head over to the following link and follow the instructions provided.

http://www.donatetomyrelay.org/omarkooheji

If you want to learn more about the relay or cancer research in general you can check out the following links:

http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/

I’m aware I’m sending this a little close to the date so I’ve not set up a target for my fundraising, personally I’m aiming for a couple of million, but I doubt that will happen 🙂

I’ll be taking my laptop and my phone so I might live blog the relay…