Good Times Gonna Come

31st Mar 2008 - 22:06:28

By the powers! Another month has passed us by again! I hadn't really realised that today was the last day of the month even though i was entirely concious of the fact that the end of the month marks the time honoured celebration of ye olde pay day. Since starting my new job i haven't had quite as much free time on my hands as my previous freelancing role allowed, but its certainly been a welcome change to shake up the usual routine and build a little more structure into my daily work and personal habits, even if it has thrown my perception of time completely out of whack. Although time is steadily ebbing away, i'm trying to keep my hopes up for me and McKnee finding a place of our own somewhere in Scarborough. After living in Bridlington for 23 years, i think a change of scenery is in order!

Once again, circa pay day, the great item hunt begins! I've been madly obsessing over buying a new MIDI keyboard of the semi-weighted variety. Behold the M-Audio ProKeys 88sx, isn't she a beauty? I'm refraining from buying it, which may appear to be practical to ones bank balance, but forcing myself to prolong the end purchase has simply encouraged me to search for more things to add to my list of future procurements. I've spec'd up the overall price for a new office/studio setup and it's not for the faint hearted! Amongst the many items on my wishlist also resides a shiny new MacPro. I figure (or rather hope), if i start saving for one now, by the time i can afford to keelhaul me an 8core monster there will most likely be an entirely new generation of shiny macs for the taking! I had originally set my sights on the MacMini seeing they're pretty swish for their equally small price tag, but decided against when i uncovered the horrible truth that the supplied graphics card doesn't support dual monitors. Whilst it's not a major shortcoming, after getting used to having three monitors on my desk, (yes, three.) it's quite a chore coming home to a single monitor and trying to remember that your windows machine doesn't have an Apple/Command key!

What's this?

29th Feb 2008 - 23:37:42

Another leap year, another dollar, another day. Today has marked, amongst other things, the grand event of receiving my first meaty pay cheque from my new full time job as a PHP & MySQL Developer. Needless to say, i'm pretty stoked about having cash again, but the booty wasn't in my account long before a small portion of it was wisely spent on my soon to arrive LEGO Mindstorms NXT! It's expensive, but i've wanted that bad boy for ages and i felt it was about time i bought myself a gift that would allow me to spend some time away from my pc. True, you can program your awesome creations (using Java and/or C afaik) but i'm betting most of the fun will be in building each and every robotic companion the old noodle can cook up. I can't wait for it to arrive and have started reading Daniel H. Wilsons' How to Survive a Robot Uprising again in search of inspiration to prepare for the ensuing fun and games. I'd actually forgotten just how amusing a read it was, so it's been quite refreshing to read through again. For now, I'm off to set up a makeshift fort by the postbox! Happy Leap Year!

The Dance of Eternity

29th Jan 2008 - 23:33:57

Avast ye scurvy lubbers! The new year be upon thee and already the fantabulous month of January has brought around many twists and turns to hinder the already painful endeavour of quite simply, living. Amongst striving to keep our heads above the water (after loosing two grandparents over the last month), i've been keeping myself entertained with the Nightmare Before Christmas piano tabulature which has proven to be quite challenging and has driven me to the conclusion that Danny Elfman is most definately insane! I've been scouring the internet and local music shops for a copy of "The Breakfast Machine" and another track by Squire Elfman but haven't had any luck so far, but whats a pirate without a booty to yearn for? :D - Speaking of booty, i remembered this little treasure from our Black Books DVD boxset and just had to share it with those of you who have yet to experience the awesome comedy of Dylan Moran. Enjoy!

Other than the awesome NMBC sheet music, i also was lucky enough to receive The Orange Box which has so far entertained me to no end! I had previously played Half Life 2, but had neglected Episode 1 in favour of waiting for the Orange Box which also includes Episode 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal! After hammering away at Portal and replaying Half Life 2, i fed my long overdue addiction to Team Fortress Classic with a long bout of Team Fortress 2 matches, reliving the good old days in a much shinier, more entertaining and wildly engrossing form. Then, i was given a gift via the magic of Steam from a friend i frequently talk to (and now game with) whom i met on deviantArt. The gift, you ask? The greatest gift of all, i proclaim! Garrys Mod, we both cry! Huzzah, let the entertainment begin!

Take the Time

22nd Dec 2007 - 14:18:08

Ahar! Merry Christmas ye scurvy blog readin' lubber! Here to spread some festive cheer, a jolly old fat man and his flying reindeer. (Did you see what i did there?) My present to you guys this year comes in the form of a comical Christmas animation, made by some crazy individual on deviantArt. Behold, this video had me in creases, i laughed so hard i cried and i cried so much i laughed even harder and almost coughed up a lung. I hope it spreads some festive yuletide cheer, it is Christmas isn't it?

When Dream and Day Unite

15th Nov 2007 - 13:53:06

Huzzah! This morning i received a package. A rather large A4 sized parcel; one chock full of monochromatic scawlings of the inaudible nature. I'm talking, of course, about my most recent purchase; Dream Theater Keyboard Anthology.

It. Is. Awesome!

I've been attempting to learn Dream Theater tracks for a good while now and have managed to play most of it by ear so far, but some of their riffs and tasty chord progressions are far too intense to even begin to comprehend without the aid of some form of tabulature to glean from. Cue the anthology book: Sheet music to the rescue! Imagine my suprise when i remembered how completely inept i am at reading sheet music... Well, theres no time like the present to start brushing up on something i haven't bothered to nurture since taking piano lessons all those years ago. So off i fly, from one keyboard to another; long live the metal!

Perfect Strangers

12th Oct 2007 - 13:00:57

Huzzah! Tonight begins the grand journey upon the high seas of mis-adventure! Man the lifeboats and clean my ass, tonight we sail for Cuba! Actually, scrap Cuba, Manchester Apollo; prepare for a full metal onslaught of piratical proportions! Ok, so i'm rambling incoherent babble, but that usually forms the bulk of these here blogs anyway, so let me reiterate in a more appropriate manner.

Manchester Apollo + Symphony X + Dream Theatre = one very happy Zachy.

Yes, you heard me right, Symphony X AND Dream Theatre in the same evening! If you don't know who either of the two bands are, i suggest you stop reading and begin expanding your cd collection! I'm really looking forward to an evening of metal goodness and can't wait for the four days of incoming tinitus to die down, tonight will be epic! I have to admit, this is my first actual live concert at a venue such as the Apollo. I've been to 'gigs' before, but never to see anyone famous, so to speak. I'm glad that my first experience will be of the Dream Theatre variety, so all in all, i'm pretty stoked!

I've been glued to Dream Theatre for around five years now after hearing 'Sea of Lies' by Symphony X as a game soundtrack whilst channel hoping on Sky. Whilst searching for more Symphony X tracks, an old college comrade pointed my ears towards Dream Theatre, which promptly ushered in a new age of musical treats for my aging cd collection. Looking back, my collection hasn't really expanded in variety, only quantity. The play count totals in iTunes reflect that i'm pretty much glued to four particular bands, namely; Dream Theatre, Symphony X, Kamelot and Dragon Force. Personally, i can't think of anything i'd rather listen to whilst on a 12hour php fest. For now tho, i best make haste and prepare for this evening! Yarr! Avast! Yo ho! Flags!

Caught in a web

31st Jul 2007 - 20:39:33

Ahoy! It seems i haven't been blogging much lately, so lets try and catch back up to speed, via the medium of dance...

Work has ended due to the summer holidays. *dances* This new lease of spare time has given me the chance to finish up a personal project. *dances some more* Me and the missus purchased a 250GB external hard drive. *legs become tired* We also bought the Monty Python boxset (which looks Awesome!) *keels over* and i bought myself a kazoo! *plays the death march on his kazoo*

Acid Rain

25th Jun 2007 - 13:18:14

It seldom rains here in the UK, instead it pours the aqua extreme. By the bucket load. The weather here has been horrific at best as of late, constantly raining with plenty of thunder and lightning to boot. Getting drenched on the way to and from work isn't one of the things i look forward to, but it seems my prayers to the gods go unheeded non the less. Fortuneatly (or rather, unfortunately), upon arrival at work, most of the 'areas' me and McKnee work together on have been flooded lately meaning that by the time we arrive, the place has already been cleaned before hand by the caretakers leaving us not much work to be done in our tiny 2 and a 1/2 hour shifts. Seeing it's been raining for nigh on 6hours now, today looks like another one of those days... ahh the fun that awaits upon our arrival.

On a different note, i've once again been subjected to a bombardment of youTube videos by all the chaps i've made acquaintences with in the deviantART chat rooms. Whilst i usually refrain from clicking said linkage and spending hours trawling through videos, i found a real gem that just has to be shared and seen by all! While i can't remember who it was that posted the link, this video really caught my eye and more notably, pleased my eardrums no end. As far as i have been able to find, the song is by a group called Grandaddy who apparently have two albums to thier name which i'll be trying to track down over the next few days. If anyone manages to find any further info on them, please get in touch with me as i'd love to hear more of thier awesome tunes!

Another music related rant before i bail for work... Two words; Dream Theatre. Ok, ok... another two words; Symphony X. Admittedly, X isn't actually a word and more of an individual letter/character, but i'm sure you get my point! Long story short (minus the babble), me and the missus along with a few friends will hopefully be going to see my favourite band in existance, Dream Theatre, who are being supported by another extremely awesome band, namely; Symphony X. I'm so stoked, i can't wait for the tickets to arrive so i can begin worshipping them in preperation for the epic event. If you haven't heard of either of the two bands, i suggest you get yourself to the nearest cd store, or iTunes, and proceed to purchase each and every album you can find! For now, time is pressing on, so i best dash to work and get wet in the delightful rain. Thanks for reading.

Of Whales and Woes

15th Jun 2007 - 20:49:36

Mod Rewrite. The name itself strikes fear into the hearts of even the most hardend web developers across the globe. As my good friend Geffy recently said, "It's a black art." with which, i whole heartedly agree. I've found myself looking at a fair few .htaccess files over the last few months, during which i've trawled the internet countless times looking for a decent resource from which i can learn anything remotely useful regarding the elusive mod_rewrite. After thumbing through a few forums and tutorials, i turned to Amazon in hope i could find myself a book. The path to enlightenment, i thought! I was instantly shocked when i was presented with one single result and then twice as shocked when i saw what it was i would receive upon parting with my booty. The one single book returned costs £27.99, has 160 pages and was printed a year and a half ago. Not exactly what i'd look for, but hey, lets have a look and see if there are any comments about it? None. Presumably because no sane person is willing to fork out for such a crappy book. But as they say, "Never judge a book by it's cover." Whoever 'they' are. So i'm sat looking at Amazon now, pondering buying said book... For now though, I'll let you know how that goes, perhaps in another post. Tally ho!

Through the fire and flames.

5th Jun 2007 - 20:39:27

Huzzah! After a few hours of bashing my head against my desk, i've managed to trick out my ajax script-age to conform to Internet Explorers way of thinking! With any luck, the blog comments should now function properly in all major browsers. So far, i've tested it out in the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera, so if anyone encounters any problems, please let me know and ill do my best to rectify it asap. The problem seemed to occur when trying to alter the 'innerHTML' property of an element to include the 'responseText' value returned from a successful ajax request. When testing on my local machine, all the requests worked fine in said three browsers, but upon uploading to my server, IE flaked out with its appaulingly sparse error messages. After googling around idly for a while, i found this useful post on Evolt.org which mentioned IE's overall uselessness and an apparent fix which involved wrapping the 'responseText' between a pair of nicely generated paragraph tags. Seeing as my responses we're already formatted in xHTML, i decided to substitute the '<p></p>' tags with a tasty '<div></div>' wrapper to try it out before giving in for the day. To my suprise, IE kicked straight in and now works as i had first whitnessed when designing on my local machine. It's a strange niggle that took me a fair while to figure out, but i'm glad that it wasn't too much hassle to fix. I'm liking the blog comment malarky so far, so at least it was worth the time and effort.

Meanwhile, work is going well (at least, as well as work can go), i watched Shrek3 (yes, its not out yet; naughty me!) and i also managed to catch up with an old college comrade and also an old college tutor. Seeing both of them, it was good to remenice on old times, it seems that fun just doesnt come in coursework shaped containers anymore...

Across the seven seas!

4th Jun 2007 - 11:03:56

Avast, yo ho and by the powers! It's been a long time coming, but finally ZackBrown.co.uk has started to endure the trappings of an entire overhaul/redesign to include some extras i never quite had time to implement in past incarnations. It's here, it's almost finished and it's looking good from my perspective. Whilst i haven't had a blogroll for almost three years (my last blog entry was made on CaptainRedmuff.co.uk) and my blogging habbits leave something to be desired, i will be making a good attempt to blog out all my usual rantings on these here pages, alongside some hopefully 'inspiring' programming tutorials to keep my creative juices flowing and also generally as a place to blow off some steam. More on that in a later post, i'm still building the backend in what little time i have to spare...

Leaving the web-babble behind, life has been pretty uneventful as of late. I've been doing a lot of freelancing work in between odd jobs to muster up some funds (for what i don't yet know?) and seem to be accumulating paid work by the bucket load, which is a welcome affair in these hard times of trials and tribulations. I've been crawling around blogs of fellow uni comrades trying to keep up with the ins and outs of thier blogging habbits, which is one of the main reasons i decided to start blogging again myself (or at least attempt to keep up). For those of you who read, feel free to comment away - i'm hoping to fix any major problems as and when they occur, so let me know if you hit any problems.

Pirates! Thaasands of em! Yes, the time finally came to storm the local cinema in a full on pirate-fueled seige to whitness the climatic ending of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy! Upon rendezvous near the cholesterol inducing sugary treats, myself, McKnee and our piratey accomplices regailed with joy as the one and only 'Jack Sparrow' stole our hearts, plunder and nigh on three hours of my usual working day. It was a truely epic sequel, one not to disapoint hardcore pirate fanatics such as myself. I wont give away any plot lines for those who have yet to be enlighted, but i will say that it was well worth the wait and i'll definately be going to see it again soon.

On that note, ill take my leave and return to the painful leisure of work. Thanks to all for reading, i'll be back again soon with more piraticus-extreme. Until then, i fare thee well.

Blogroll of Zack Brown