If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers...

Been here, done this got the t-shirt to prove it

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don't have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.

Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don't bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.

Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor's house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can't happen very often.

Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I've given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can't handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

A Sad Story

Let me tell you folks a story...
When I first started playing video games (back in the days of the Sega Mega Drive) I played almost everyday with which my skills improved (and I learned that shouting at the game got me nowhere ;))

Overtime, the MegaDrive turned into a NES, then a SNES, a Sega Mega CD, a Saturn, a N64, a Dreamcast, a Playstation, PS2, XBox, Gamecube, XBox 360, PS3 and WII
I've had my share of handhelds as well ranging from the original GameBoy and the Sega GameGear to a Nintendo DS and a PSP!

When I was young I didn't have to worry about how I obtained these systems, or the games for them, but now I am older I have to worry about this thing called money :(
In order to obtain this, I had to get a job which took away some of my gaming time - not a problem, there was still plenty of time each day to play :)

Then I met a girl who then (for some reason) demanded I spend time with her, this turned out to take away almost all of my free time from work to play games :(
I had a little dabble with new games every so often, but could never really dedicate the time and effort into playing a game through all the way (at last count I own about 12 - 13 Xbox 360 games that have only ever been played once or twice).
I'm still good at games, but nowhere near as good as I once was, I've lost an edge over opponents who I used to trounce in different games. I'm slower and my fingers don't appear to work as well as they once did, leaving this once great gamer a shell of his former self :(

I ask you now my gamer friends, am I getting "too old" for games (I'm 23 now soon to be 24)? Have I passed my peak? Is there hope yet, can I become good again? Is there some form of enhancement drug I can use? Am I alone in this sad state of affairs, or are there others like me? Is there a support group I can go to :)
Any answers are most welcome, and I hope to hear your own storys :)

Ahh, So Thats Where I Left It...

Just remembered I have a blog, thought I'd lost it in the depths of the net, never to be seen again.
Well anyway whats new? I have just accepted a new job working for my old secondary school as a IT Technician, I'm going to see the Foo Fighters play at the O2 Arena in November and have ad a few more people interested in me building websites for them (the latest being Amazing Bikes).
They were kind enough to invite me down to Brands Hatch at the end of September for the final races of the season. This gave me a chance to take the camera down there to test it out. I've uploaded some pictures to my Flickr account. I managed to get a few good shots, and some bad ones too. I've now decided to get a d-SLR camera, and currently have my eye on a Canon EOS 400D. My favourite picture is the first one on the list which was taken quite late on during the day.

Well thats it for now, I'll try and post more regulary now I'm getting a bit more time to do this sort of stuff :-).

Oh one last thing, check out Wunderland Animation. It's a new blog creatd by one of my best friends, who is using it to display some of his work. He is really creative, and has produced some stunning work.

Spiderman 3 The Game

Ok, so I have been playing Spiderman 3 the game recently on the x-box 360. At first look the graphics look better, NY City has been scaled up and the swinging looks faster. The new swinging system takes a little bit to get used to, when you release the swing button you let go of the web (which is a bit different to Spiderman 2). When you play the game a little longer you realise the graphics on a lot of the characters (apart from our hero) seems a little flat and rushed, then there's the god awful camera that is always in the wrong place at the wrong time even worse though it doesn't seem to work that well in the first place. At this point I felt like putting the game down in disgust never to play it again. Something inside me told me not to (possibly my inner-spider?) and I continued to play it. After about 2 hours of playtime I can admit it does become fun to play, it has it's quirks that I like, the missions are challenging (something not usually seen in Marvel games), this means the game is not a button mashing game, instead it requires a bit of strategy to complete the missions. There are plenty of side missions to do and challenges to complete such as collect tokens. Oh and one more thing, remember in Spiderman 2 there was an annoying side challenge? You remember it, its coming back to you. If not here's a reminder "I LOST MY BALLOON". Yes that’s the one, well good news it's not in this game :-D.

All in all it's a good game if you can bare to get past the first couple of hours of torture, but then you'll learn to appreciate it. There’s no denying though that this game has a rushed feeling to it, to get it out in time with the movie. I'm happy I can web-sling again now, but I could have waited a couple more months for this game to come out to be perfect.

I'll try to get an in game picture up later on, and I haven't forgotten about the XDA Orbit, that’s slowly being tested and a report will be up soon enough.

Spiderman 3

Well, what can I say? Apart from what a film. Being a bit of a Spidey fan I noticed some bits didn't tie in with the comics like how the Symbiote came to Earth, but all in all it was a great film. I'm not going to say too much about it as i don't want to spoil it for anyone else yet. All I can say is if you haven't seen it yet, what are you waiting for?

I've now received the game for Xbox 360, I'm going to have to have a big play around with that this weekend (good job it's a bank holiday weekend).

And in other news i've just received my new O2 XDA Orbit, pictures and a review will be up once I've had a play around with it.

And Now For Something Completly Different

I have just booked my tickets for Spiderman 3, I really envy all of those that aren't able to get tick... ahh who am I kidding? HAHA I have tickets and you don't (does a victory dance).
And now in all seriousness I can't wait for it, a full report will be up once I have seen it.

Now off to fight crime "go web go" aww nuts I forgot I can't do that.

(Does anyone have a radioactive spider? or maybe something that can make radioactive waves?);-)

Cuting Edge News

Let me just cut straight to the point in this post. I just saw this. Not to sure what compelled him to do it, but I bet it's safe to say the sausages and meatballs were off for the night.

Superhereos

Just came across this quiz
Apparently I'm Spiderman.
You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.
Have a look here to see my full results.

So I guess that makes me cool (I always preferred Spiderman to all the others):-D

Speaking of Spiderman, have you seen the latest trailer for the new movie? It looks good, I can't wait for it to come out (May 4th) and will definatley be seeing it .
But untill then heres a trailer to tickle your fancy.