Updates:

Was reading through the guildelines for my MA the other day and found the section about what we actually needed to submit. Three bound portfolios. "OUCH!" I though. "Bet that's gonna cost me." Found the University's Bindary website and checked out their pricelist. £35 for the hardbound copy. £35 x 3. OUCH OUCH OUCH!

For a variety of reasons I needed to go onto campus, so on Wednesday I did. First stop was a shortish meeting with George Green about the portfolio, the critical reflective in particular, and also some website-related stuff that I'm doing for him. I asked him about the binding and he told me that, thank god, the portfolios DIDN'T have to be hard bound after all! YAY! After the meeting I went down to the bindary and checked out the prices for the softer, thermal binding. £7.50 each. Now THAT is more affordable! Now I just need to get it finished.

Also in the works this week has been Paul asking me to put together a Warhammer: Age of Reckoning guild forum. Well, I more volunteered really, but he was rather enthusiastic about my proposal. ^_^ So I have put together The Black Guard's forum, with which we hope to gather a lot of interested people and join the WAR beta, which would be quite cool.

I've done a fair bit of reading this week. I'm currently working my way through Richard Knaak's The Well of Eternity and Stephen King's On Writing, the latter so that I have something vaguely 'academic' (yes I use the term very loosely) to reference in my critical reflection.

Oh, and I've updated my Facebook and stuff, cos I promised I would.

~Jon

Further to last update, I decided to scrap that menu and add this one, the code for which I borrowed from Blizzard's website. It is neater.

That is all, for the moment.

~Jon

Just a short update today. I installed a new menu system for the 'blog' on this main page. It stops the page becoming HUGE while still retaining entries close at hand. I'll probably save 4 or 5 entries linked on this page (any more and the page will take ages to load on slow connections).

To expand or collapse an entry, click on its date/title. For example, clicking "10th August 2007" above SHOULD collapse this short section.

Images to replace the default bright orange arrow type thing will be coming soon as I've done some more work on the MA and maybe had some sleep.

~Jon

Its been a hectic few days since the site overhaul. I've been back up to Lancaster and carted down another load of heavy stuff on the train, destroying my big Suitcase of Holding™ at the same time. I've worked sporadically on the MA which I've been having some trouble with. And, of course, I've been playing games far too much.

The MA.

I've finished the second draft of my portfolio stuff, and I'm currently sorting out the third and probably final draft before submission on the 3rd September. Its amazing how many things that you thought sounded great before now sound completely naff and artificial. Especially some of the dialogue. So during the last week I've been working on two things - the dialogue and the timeline (which I realised was completely out of whack).

Come the end of this week, I need to have finished redraft 3 so I can focus on the other element of the MA - the critical/reflective bit. Its a 3000 word study of what I've done, how and why I've done it, and what has inspired me. I've been putting it off for a while, trying to focus on the writing, but now its looming over my head like some kind of Sword of Damoclese.

Games

Not been doing a massive amount games-wise. I've finally started working my way through the later sections of F.E.A.R. which I've put off for ages without any real reason to do so. I've also installed Unreal Tournament 2004 and, of course, have been playing World of Warcraft far too much.

Recently I acquired a copy of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the Nintendo DS, and I have to say its very good fun. Big areas, lots of stuff to collect, quests to complete, irritating bosses to kill. Just my kind of thing. Oh, and the soundtrack is great too. Haven't completed the first run through the game yet, but I am assured that there are a load of unlockable things to do after I have. Huzzah!

Blogging

Apparently I need to get back into blogging. Last year I updated my FFXI blog and my main site blog quite regularly. This has not continued this year, and I'm told that I should at least sort out my Myspace page and maybe get one of those Facebook things. I shall do so, though I'm not entirely sure what I should even put on them. Maybe having them will be enough?

~Jon

Is 7 your lucky number?

It's been an awfully long time since we had a real proper update in terms of site design. The last time I fiddled with the page was a year or two ago when I decided that, because I was teaching, I didn't have enough time on my hands to update the site properly - thus I changed to the Blogger format. Thing about blogs is, though: they look daft if they aren't updated regularly. Which mine wasn't.

So it was about time to do a real update. All the familiar sections are here: pages for my artwork, links to my favourite sites, links to the sites I host (fewer these days, but still there!) and a link to my rarely-updated blog.

Also on display is a new background image which I've been slaving away at for a while. A higher resolution version will be found in the gallery soon. (It isn't there yet because the higher res version actually has lots more detail in - wanted to keep it pretty simple for the site background.)

In The Works

In the works I have a couple of new pieces for the gallery that I meant to put up ages ago. There's also my novel, hopefully coming soon - it is being redrafted at the moment and hopefully will be looking at publishing sometime mid-late next year (*fingers crossed*).

You are up to date.

~Jon