Yeah, guess what, John Lennon was right. Life IS what happens to you while you're making other plans. The last year i've experienced a major cutback in my online time. Well actually i'm online more often at school but not active, just surfing the web reading all kinds of articles and stuff. Combine that with my activities at the youth house and bang, no more time to skin wlm, photoshop or even post on the forums. Believe me i want to but i just don't have time/motivation to turn on my pc in the evening. And those days i do get my pc on are like today, i spend half of my day reading news on places where i have been active over the years and when i do feel like doing some other things i realise that i have about time to write a quick post (here or usually around the staff lounge and area 51) before i have to head of to a meeting of some sort, in this case at the youth house.
Anyway i hope to be able to pass by here more frequently in the future.
Grades are (on 20): 11,17,11,13,16,12 Maybe next exams i'll actually open my books Ow and on monday i'm officially part of the board of nijdrop (explained somewhere in another post )
Last night i was, as usual for most evenings, in the youth house (for the people who know Dutch: http://www.nijdrop.be/). I was actually keeping the place open for the evening and well, the place was empty. Not even a single of the regular clients came by. I basically spent 5 hours in an empty bar.
There was a singing course going on so i couldn't just close the bar. The course was given by Sean Dhondt who is actually quite famous in Belgium from his band Nailpin and presenting on TMF (MTV ). So he was there, his 'students' which left right after their sessions (except for one who brought 2 friends but those left when her session was over as well). I got one of my friends to come over which resulted in a couple of games of darts (i was playing against myself before he arrived) and some table football. I drank more myself than i sold and as most of you already figured out that's not good for profits
Yay! No more exams for me for a couple of months! I'm not gonna say a lot here because i am trying to get my old skinning skillz back alive
But i did have fun randomly heading outside today and heading to a friend who i convinced in joining me on random walking. In the end we met another friend who was coming back from school (it's funny really, he's in high school but 2 years older than me and i'm in college) and we walked back home since he lives like 200 metres from me and the first friend.
Btw, the result of the poll will basically determine whether i'll make it or not. it's a lot of work and i like it but without propper motivation i'll prolly give up halfway.
I've been talking to some people lately, some of them i haven't talked to since 2004. And with all this talking i ran into some great news. I heard some rumours first, so i started talking to ipab.
Ipab was a real innovator back in the 6.x - 7.x days and he's still one of the leading persons in the skinning community. So i talked to him. About design evolved mostly. It's a new website/community ipab, shayne and willz are starting. And that's where the facts came in I found out quite some cool things i'm not going to tell but i am gonna tell this: messenger skinning is going active again.
Why would i care about this? Let me explain you about Mad Skinning. Mad Skinning was a small community around a few people (back in the days when Messenger Mad was at it's peak). It started out with Ipab, The Don (now Banky) and me. Some other skinners joined us etc, but by those days updates for the messenger client came almost daily and it was nearly impossible to keep up. So Mad Skinning started falling apart and eventually died.
One of the bigger contributions of Mad Skinning was the installer method developed by Ipab (and me but he did most of the work) which Jaymach (aka the Skin Collector) used to mass release skins by various authors. These installers were down to about 30% of the size usual installers were and a lot of skinners went to Jaymach for an installer. This led to huge popularity of skins. The fact that the installer worked on multiple builds of MSN instead of just one really boosted the compatibility and caused skinners to have more time to work on updates. Why it worked on multiple versions has a lot to do with the fact that it only contained and replaced the files changed by the skin instead of the whole exe. Which also explains the small size Actually installers used by the few skins that got released recently worked using the same methods.
Right now a lot of those people who used to be a part of mad skinning and other skinning groups are considering to become active again. Mostly because of MsgPlus! Live which has brought support for skins to a whole new level. And because of Design Evolved. So keep an eye out for those words. Design Evolved is going to be pretty huge
PS: I kept this short. Believe me. The history of Mad Skinning and skinning in general is really really long.
It does! I'm tired as shit, people were constantly asking me how come i looked so damn tired last night. And the worst part is that i in fact hardly learn. It's just that i have to get out of bed earlier in the weekends to learn, and i need my sleep.
Anyway, went to nijdrop (youth house) last night. Performance by Discobar Galaxie, they're the best couple of DJ's Belgium has. Awesome night As usual i was there before 6pm (the bar opens at 7pm and the club at 9pm), i know to much people there First i helped with some last minute preparations (making sure the visuals could be projected). Than i thought the sister of one of my friends how to tend the bar together with some mates. Mainly telling her what not to do (and for some reason we could always use her brother as an example on how not to do things). Later i spent some time in between the club and the bar (basically just going from one to another because my friends were still at the bar). Until DBG started their set i helped out by exchanging cups for money (special system with reusable plastic cups) and i messed a bit with the lights. (which means putting the strobo on and making the scanners strobo as well and shit like that) Danced a couple of hours and came home way sooner than usual fridays (4am IS EARLY!).
So quite a nice evening, i needed it, i'm used to going there 3 to 4 evenings each week, and this was the first time since my exams started.
Thanks for wasting 5 minutes of your life reading about mine
As many of you know (or don't know), i'm in the middle of exams at the moment. I did my first one (math) yesterday and to be honest, i expected it to be waaaaaaaay harder
Tomorrow (Wednesday) i'm having an exam in (freely translated) Fundamentals of Object Orientated Development. And Friday Fundamentals of Object Orientated Programming, which is basically easy for me since i learned myself C++ when i was 14 i forgot most of it somewhere in the last 4 years though, but now i'm learning Java and it's easy as pie. Next week will be Databases, French, English and the week after Computer Architecture. The only exam that still kind of scares me is the Computer Architecture one, but i think i'll be able to pull it off.
After my exams i have 2 weeks without classes, so that rocks
This is mainly a test entry, since this whole blog thing isn't completely finished yet. But i guess this is gonna be my new main blog since my previous one is now non-existant. Right now i am: Learning for my exams which will be from 14/01 until 28/01. Which might explain my (in)activity the last weeks. Gaming on my PS3 a lot.
on Long time no activity