Web design/new project

A couple of Months back my Uncle asked me to design him a website for his carpentry business and I said I would. But he didn't have all the information for me at the time so it was put on the back burner until yesterday during my day off coming up to the end of my work period. I decided that since I have a bit more free time on my hands now that I am entering what I like to call "limbo". This is the time between my work periods. It usually lasts up to about 2 weeks and I tend to get very restless for things to do so this project is exactly what I need. I thought it would only take me a few hours maybe a day to whip up the basic design template for all the pages as I had done a year of some basic web design in the course I was in before I dropped out of college. But that was over two years ago now and it is amazing how much of it I have forgotten. I guess it's like everything, you forget how to do it over time if you don't use the skills. I guess the saying "practice makes perfect" is true.

So I think what I am going to do is buy myself a couple of books about web design and learn from them and find a couple of decent tutorial sites online to help as well. Because at the moment I feel a little like the picture below. I really enjoyed designing websites during college and when I am in front of the computer typing code for sites the time seems to fly. I'll sit down after lunch we'll say and then before I know it, it's dinner time and I haven't done much because I keep changing my mind about how exactly I want it.

Sleep deprived Saturday

So I have currently been awake for 31 hours and I don't like it. I miss my bed and my awesomely random dreams. I decided that it would be a great idea to write this entry in my sleep deprived state and see what happens sure. I had to get up at 3 am to go to work today and I actually went to bed early last night but I just could not sleep at all. My brain kept telling me that I was going to sleep through my alarms and I would miss work, so I just lay there staring at the ceiling for what seemed like days.

I eventually decided that there was no way I was going to get any sleep so I put on my headphones and started to listen to some music and paroose some random blogs. I came upon THIS one that was truely random indeed. I highly recommend this blog to anyone looking for a blog that is compossed of literally some of the most random things I have ever read. I can honestly say I would love to be as random as this person. I for some reason love being pure random and saying things that make my friends wonder what is going on inside my head. I also found some amazing songs that I am now going to stick a few up here for all to see and enjoy as I know ye will :-)

The first one here is Breezeblocks by Alt-j. It is definitely my favourite of all the ones I have found recently. Don't really know why, I'll get back yo you on that when I figure it out. I think it's because of the lyrics. They are amazing.

Random Things I Have Learned Recently

Day 4 of a week I have been enjoying.

So I learned something very interesting today. Not to sure anyone really want to hear it, but oh well. Apparently if you drink blue food colouring and get sick you will puke blue, but if you digest it and pee it will be green. When I was told this I was intrigued and disgusted at the same time. Also the person was just sitting there and suddenly this was the random thought that came out of their mouths. It's one of those things you could have done without hearing, but after you have heard it you are kind of interested.

Anybody got any weird or strange fears? I was talking to someone about my fear of heights and they told me about a few weird fears that they learned about recently. These are just a couple that I can remember:

• Anatidaephobia: The fear, that some time, somewhere, some how, a duck is watching you.

I don't even know what to say about this. Why is this a fear? Are ducks really scary? This is just one of those things that does not make any sense at all in my mind. 

• Paraskavedekatriaphobia: The fear of Friday the 13th.

In one sense I can actually understand this fear. I personally believe in a lot of supernatural things and don't care if people ridicule me for this. But I honestly do not believe that anything extra weird happens on Friday the 13th. It is simply another Friday in the year. 

I also learned a new fact about the Titanic that I never new. I have always been interested in everything about the Titanic. But the one thing I never knew in all my years about the Titanic was that it made 3 stops instead of only the 2 I thought it made. I always thought it went from Southampton to Cobh and left for New York. But today I learned that it left Southampton, went to Cherbourg in France next and then on to it's stop in Cobh before finally departing on its voyage. My mother and I always shared the knowledge we gathered on the Titanic and neither of us knew this fact until she told me after hearing it at a table quiz.

Well that's all the random I have to share today. I realise it is short, but sometimes short is good. Hope this is interesting to someone out there. Oh and always remember to be on the look out for ducks.

Stardansheill o7

Week 15 Day 1

So for week 15 I have decided to do something I have always enjoyed doing, which is write. So I am going to write a new story everyday for the week. I will be uploading them all individually and will probably do a summary post at the end of the week with all the links.

Todays story is going to be about a man by the name of Liam and his hearts desire. Lets begin when Liam was 8 and his teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Liam replied that he wanted to be a time agent. All the students in his class laughed at him and he saw the teacher give a little snicker and a grin before telling him that he had a very vivid imagination, but that time travel isn't real. Little Liam did his best to hold back the tears. Liam loved to read and he had read about time agents loads of times. But what he didn't understand at that age was these books were fiction.

When he got home from school he went to his room and was throwing his books around because he hated them and didn't want to read about time agents or time traveling anymore. While throwing his books around, one of them hit his wall and he looked over and saw a poster he had gotten from his parents for Christmas. He stared at it for what seemed like hours, but was only a matter of seconds.

He decided then and there to never give up on his dream of becoming a time agent, even if he had to invent time travel himself. He placed all his books back on his shelf neatly and started reading a new one. From then on whenever a new teacher or any person asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up he would just tell them he wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor or something. He new though that he always would want to be a time agent, no matter what he had to do.

New Things Week 11 & 12

So my weeks have started overlapping and it's getting confusing for me. I feel like I am missing a week, but since I put them up here every week I clearly amn't lol. But I have gotten the overlapping under control and all will return to normal with this entry. To get it back to normal I am doing a blog with two weeks in it rather than one.

So for this week I decided to become a vegetarian for the week. I have absolutely no idea why I decided to do this. I swore that I would never give up meat. It's not very often I would have a meal that doesn't include some form of meat. Mainly just breakfast, pizzas and the odd pasta dish. But since this is all about doing things I said I would never do I decided to try it and see how I got on. It was definitely one of the hardest weeks so far, if not the hardest one. I started on Tuesday and I found the first few days handy enough and the food was pretty good. But then I started to notice that I needed to eat more during the day because my appetite had increased. By Friday whenever I smelled meat it made me miss it. I also noticed that every time I was making my dinner I was thinking about what meat I could add to the dish to make it complete. It was a really interesting week and I enjoyed all the meals I made.

Tuesday: I made vegetable stir fry with noodles in Chinese Hoisin and Garlic sauce. I used baby corn, carrots, onions, courgette, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, mangetout, and cashew nuts. It was lovely and all the vegetables in the pan created a lovely smell before I even added the sauce. The sauce was a nice, but I wouldn't buy it again. It wasn't exactly a taste that would appeal to me too much. I thought it smelt like ginger and had a strange after taste. I just couldn't put my finger on what exactly it tasted like, but it was still really nice. I'd never really had courgette and never really new what it tasted like and was wary to eating it because I didn't know whether I would like it or not. But after trying it, it was nice, when stir-fried anyway.

Wednesday: I made Pasta Provencial. I made the sauce on Sunday though, as it can be frozen and heated up straight out of the freezer and added to pasta. The sauce takes a couple of hours to make, so it is easier to make it in multiple batches. 1 batch can be used in one spaghetti bolognase to feed four and it's delicious. I much prefer it to jars of sauce and actually don't eat the jars anymore.

Lent

Well since we are a fair bit into the lenten season I thought I would write something about it. I for one am not a religious person in any way at all. I haven't been for a long time. I have no problem with other peoples beliefs though. But I also do not believe in giving up something for 40 days just because Jesus Christ went into the desert for 40 days with nothing. But I do give something up every year because I was raised a God fearing Catholic and took part in Lent every year until I gave up religion. 

I give something up every year to see if I can do it. I do it for myself and no one else. This year I gave up all sweets, chocolate and crisps. I was going really well and hadn't broken it, that was until Paddy's weekend came along. Not only did I break it, I destroyed it. Since Mothers day was the day after Paddy's day, there was cake and chocolate everywhere. Since I didn't manage to last 40 days, I have decided to see how ling exactly I can go without eating any sweets, crisps or chocolate. I have set myself 20 day intervals to make it shorter and hopefully easier to manage. I wonder how long I can last? Anybody care to hazard a guess. I think this will be rather interesting. Do you guys think Easter Sunday counts when i get an Easter egg, or would that be breaking it?

I may put a post up here from time to time to say how I am getting on and how difficult, or easy it is. I know it will be hard at the start, but hopefully it will get easier as time goes on.

More than likely I will be posting updates on my Facebook and Twitter. Go like and follow me on those if you want to. 

Stardansheill o7

New Things week 7

This week I was supposed to try Japanese cuisine at an event a friend organised in the NUIG anime society, but unfortunately I arrived late due to bus timetabling issues. God damn Irish transport system. But that's an issue for another day. Unfortunately all of the Sushi was gone, but there was rice balls left and I had never tried them either and they are technically Japanese.

New Things Week 5

As part of my new years resolutions I decided to do something new every week that I would never have done before. 5 weeks down and 47 weeks to go and it's going well. A couple of weeks got off to a shaky start because of difficulty coming up with something, but all weeks ended successfully :) 

Attempting to get the needle through

So for the 5th week I decided to see how I look with my ear pierced. Since it may only be temporary I didn't want to pay to have it done so I got my brother to do it for me lol. He has done it to a few people before and never messed it up before. But when he went to do mine he couldn't get the needle to go out the back of my ear so he ended up pushing it through hard and it went in at a weird angle. So when he went to put in the earring itself it wouldn't go through the other side. Between himself, myself and my Mother we spent about twenty minutes trying to get the earring in with absolutely no success and a lot of pain.