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Richy's Random Ramblings

Personal: New Job!

January 9, 2003
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[Tigger and Zebedee]After several months of being unemployed, I’ve now been offered a job and I start on Monday! Yipee! (bouncy bouncy Richy).

I’m going to be working for a local web design and SEO (search engine optimisation) company doing a whole variety of work – and by looks of things I’m going to really enjoy working for them. I’m getting paid 3/4 of what I was previously on, but as this new place is less than 2 miles away I won’t be spending a quarter of my wages on transport – hence it all nicely works out. So, I’m doing what I love doing for a local (financial stable and growing) company for a decent wage – just perfect. And it came at “just the right time” as well, my bank balance is currently, erm, “running on fumes” and whilst I did receive a payment this morning from my “other web activities” which just pushed my bank balance back into the black – I couldn’t survive much longer. Now, at the end of last year, I was unemployed, Ciaran was unemployed, my GESF and her flatmate were unemployed – and now, 9 days into the New Year, and we’ve all got jobs. Things are looking up! 🙂

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Game: Ant Wars

January 8, 2003
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[Ant]Ok since finding this game via Quanta, I’ve been playings Ant Wars for several hours(around 3 hours last night and 3 hours so far tonight) and I quite enjoy it (no I don’t, I just play games I really hate for hours on end 🙂 ).

It’s a bit like Sim City – but with Ants. You start off with around a dozen ants, and then you’ve got to hunt for food, enlarge the nest or hatch more ants. Only thing is – you can only select one “action” to do at a time. Sometimes the ants will act on their own initiative and enlarge the nest slightly or discover some food – but you’ve got to guide them.
And, like Sim City, you have disasters. Instead of Earthquakes, you have Buster the Bully with his magnifying glass burning the ants, or he’s starting an ant-farm and needs some specimens – you’ve also got floods (lots of rain), “monster attacks” (birds) and other things to look out for. You also get the chance to fight with other ants – don’t be lulled into thinking you win the fights against enemy ants everytime, they do win occasionally so check the odds (I didn’t and one of my colony’s was wiped out).
It’s hard to get to a population of 3,000 ants, and it’s extremely difficult to maintain it at the 5,000 level – but it is achievable (at least in the short term). This game, unlike many of the others I have mentioned here, just needs a standard web browser – no plugins (Flash or Java) required. However, because of that fact – every move you make is sent back to the remote server so it is slow… Perhaps if the designers of the game had made it into a Java applet, it would be even more addictive!

Blog: 200th Post

January 8, 2003
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[200th post]63days (2months and 2days) since starting this blog, I have now reached entry number 200 (this one!). Woo! Go me! 🙂 It took me 31 days to reach post 100 – so I’m currently blogging at the rate of 100 entries every 31 days – and, I work it out that by the time this blog is a year old I would have made 1,100 entries. Wow. I was actually hoping I could have hit the 200th post mark at the end of 2002, but, alas, it wasn’t to be.

Neil, on the other hand, takes around 45 days to do 100 entries – so I should, in theory, overtake him at some point…

A few boring statistics follow (mainly so I can look back in X number of units time and think “ahhh….”).

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Game: Battleships

January 7, 2003
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[Battleships]Did you, like me, ever play Battleships when you were younger? You know – the game where each player would draw a grid on some paper (or have some ‘squared paper’ already at hand), mark where you wanted your ships – and then have to guess where the other player put theirs?

If so, you can now play Battleships on the internet. Complete with stereo sounds, status reports and good graphics – this game helps recreate the enjoyment I used to get. I don’t know how the programmers have designed the computer player’s artificial intelligence: but it’s beaten me once or twice! My highest score so far has been 3980 – surly you lot can do better. Can’t you?

Weekly Wrap-up: Breakfast Club

January 7, 2003
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[Lutterworth Grammar]After last week’s “Weekly Wrapup” and the encouragement given by the good looking Meredith ( 😉 ), I’ve decided to do this week’s “Weekly Wrapup which is about “the breakfast club” and high school.

Before I commence though, I’ll have to admit that I’m a Brit and over here we tend to do things and name things properly. We have pre-school (which is also known as “playschool”, and increasing by the American term, kindergarten), followed by primary school (ages 5-11), then secondary school (ages 11-14), and then high school (also known as ‘tertiary school’, which serves ages 14-16). Those years (with the exception of playschool/pre-school) are compulsory education – meaning that every child has to be educated to those standards. At the end of high school, we have to pass our GCSE examinations (General Certificate of Secondary Education) and then we are given the choice whether to go to college to study for ‘A levels’ (16 to 18) and then on to University.

Anyway – on with the questions!

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