RichRock : Running Free

Well. It’s true. Sometimes in the Web Developer’s world, the work will hardly flow. Other times, there’s not enough time. That’s where I’m at at this particular moment in time. Just trying to keep some semblance of a normal life, trying to do things to please my babe, keeping the flat tidy, just getting things done. I know things will get quieter. I’m already looking forwards to the next project, which is graphically different from a lot of the corporate stuff I’ve built recently. Can’t wait!

Got my new Antec 900 PC case a couple of days ago, plus the Zalman fan monitor. Great pieces of kit. For those interested in both - a word of warning. The Antec’s nice 120mm fans are controlled by little switches, and plugged into Molex sockets. You’ll either have to convert or change the fans. I plan on changing the fans. I’ll get the similar blue ones, plus a cool red 120mm for the CPU cooler. It’ll create a great red core with purple/blue transitional lighting out from there.
The case is great. It’s dropped about 4 degrees of both my CPU and overall case temp. Tonight I had to take the cover off to check something (I spent a couple of hours rewiring it with spiral wrap) and felt the cooler air in the PC! Awesome.

Spiritually, things have been difficult of late. Pressures of work have taken their toll. The work I do doesn’t allow much in the way of reflection or free thinking, so I have to dedicate time to the things of God. Which I haven’t much. Plus there’s something else to mention, but it’s not going on here until I’ve mentioned and discussed with my babe first. I’ll get there. I’m on the winning side. Not that I’m bragging. Look it up in the Bible. The devil did it. He loses. Jesus wins.

Finally, I’ll post up some pics in the next few days of my PC, and the restored Parker 25 fountain pen. A pen that’s older than me!

What did you see today? I saw a few things of personal interest, I saw things coming to fruition, I saw my girlfriend (that nearly killed me on my bike), I saw blues skies and dark clouds on the same day.
In detail:
Things of personal interest. I went into the local art shoppe and had a mooch around. Noticed some rather expensive watercolours, some fine drawing pencils, and something caught my eye: A dipping pen. I have loved calligraphy since I really got interested in fountain pens, and have recently been seen in local stationers looking at cheap calligraphy sets. It’s a dirty habit, and one I must stop. However, this caught my eye because the nibs were relatively cheap, although I couldn’t get a price on the actual pen shaft itself.
Things coming to fruition. Today saw my training manual for the Content Management Systems nearly into final drafts, ready to be ported into Indesign, ready for printing and binding. That’s been a long road. The other long road has been trying to get domains mapped for one of our clients. They already own a lot of domains, and needed them all to point to the same site. That’s been the long and tedious tech road. It’s nearly over.
I saw my girlfriend. We’d had a bit of an ‘apart’ weekend, not in a a bad way, but in a ‘because of circumstances’ way. So I made the effort after work to get the ol’ mountain bike out and cycle a total of around 14 miles to see her. It was worth it. We had a dinner together, sat and chatted. I really shouldn’t have had so much food, as I felt quite ill on the way back. It was good though. I’ll be seeing her again tomorrow evening.
Finally, I saw blue skies and dark clouds in the same day. Lunchtime saw some fantastic weather as I mooched around town, yet the middle of the afternoon saw some horrendous dark clouds. I almost thought that it might have rained off this evening, but thankfully the dark clouds disappeared.
So those were a few things I saw today. What do you see?

I was trawling my favourite writing-based forum (fountainpennetwork) and found this:
http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=37221 - it just goes to show you how strange people can get when fountain pens get a hold on you…

I am bored this evening. I’ve written some poetry about the setting sun. I should read some poetry to inspire myself in this artform.

Anyway, I’ve been on the fountain pen forums, namely foutainpennetwork, and just fantasizing about pens I can’t afford. There are a couple of ‘fantasy’ pens, a couple of ‘nice’ pens, and some ‘I can afford this’ pens too.
Fantasy pens include a Namiki Bamboo, but at £169, it’s not cheap. The other is a Nakaya Urushi Cigar Piccolo, an awesome pen of beauty, but that’s in the range of $3-400. The problem is, even though these are luxury pens, I would write with them every day.
Nice pens include the Lamy 2000. Nice designer style pen.
‘I can afford them’ pens are mainly Rotring Core’s (I love the Rotring’s, but I only have a rollerball), and Tombow Objects, in almost all the colours. I wouldn’t mind one of the modern Parker 45’s.
So there we go. I’m a pen addict too. I love to journal, and I guess blogging is another variant of the blog. But I will journal more personal things than what I blog, and keep the blog to the varying things that make my life interesting. Plus providing links to all the tech stuff I learn too.