Halloween 2012!

Almost Christmas......man my blog entries are relevant!

For my pumpkin for this year, I went for something slightly less cliche'd, i went for a stormtrooper from Star Wars which I think looks pretty cool and still scary to fit with the Halloween tradition.

This year was different again as we used the inner part of the pumpkin to make things. Cat did the cooking and came up with this pumpkin bread which tasted amazing and also these roasted sugared and cinnamon pumpkin seeds. The seeds had an interesting after taste but I couldn't really eat a lot of them haha! Either way, did i mention, the pumpkin bread tasted ace!

FIFA 13 gameface!

Yep I got FIFA 13 a few months ago for my Xbox 360 and its a great addition to the series (especially the seasons online mode!).

As I have done before on FIFA 11, I wanted to give The gameface feature a bash. Gameface basically allows you to download a head model created on the ea games website that you create based off a profile and a portrait photo you upload. The result being, your created 'pro' looks just like you.

I gave this 2 attempts. The first (right photo) looks great and very accurate......apart from the blue 'avatar like' neck colour. This is due to my beard and therefore the colour tone its picked for my neck is from my bears, not my actual neck.

Obviously I wanted to do better and after a bit of trial and error with the colour correction sliders when I input my photos, I came up with this (2nd right photo). Not perfect, slightly orange and I have the scariest eyes ever (clearly they did not render accurately!). After downloading this to FIFA however, the result is pretty decent and despite the fact I am slightly more tanned in it than real life, I have used that one. I will just put the skin colour down to if I was a real professional footballer, I'd be outside more anyway!


Overall, a good feature which makes a change from all the other character generators in games which although are very in-depth and incredible use of technology to get them into cut scenes etc..., you never actually get them anywhere near to yourself. Basically from my point of view, I only ever use the character builders to build me and gameface gets it 10x closer and 10x quicker than manually selecting nose heights and eyebrow widths. Gameface is only going to get better so thumbs up for ea gameface!

And just so you can see the images I uploaded, here they are:

A rush of blog to the head!

This is just a quick-fire, 'things i was going to blog about but never did'. So here it goes, in no particular order:

1)

-41 views, well that sucks! (haha!)






2)

 Stu exclusively wearing 'the manchester menace' Manchester Phoenix mascott head. NOTE: he is not the menace, though he should be, not great with kids though.

 Here is the same guy after several hours and several beers after realising he was sat on a chair with only 3 legs in Indigo, Withington










3)

A green Gnome i found in B+M for a quid so i bought it and it sits on my desk at work. It gets multiple threats a day from work colleagues of imminent smashing  but he's still going strong.








4)

Me working in London for the Olympics (at China House) standing next to 'Wenlock' a statue of one of the mascotts. A month long job full of all sorts of random stuff during the 'UK's rendition of the Olympics', it was hard but great at the same time, glad i got to go and be involved!








5)

 Cat stood next to a life size Lionel Messi. If he wasn't wearing boots they'd be the same size haha!










5)

Paid £17 for this piece. By far and wide the coolest thing i own ever (the lego head not the amazon box!). Always wanted one and eventually dug deep for it!




6)

Steve during dinner in the maddest Brazilian restaurant ever. They just kept serving us random meats from various animals. I swear i ate a farm that night and so long as your card was turned up to 'yes'/'green' then they kept coming! I think Steve had enjoyed a few beers by that point too.








7)

Saturday saw the purchase of this beast! A gammon joint which was labeled half price so we went for it. Little did we know, £10.21 was the discounted price! It lasted for 4 days of 2 of us eating it for lunch and tea everyday at generous portions so it had longevity and a great taste! Though i think i'll lay off the gammon for a while!


8)


Yep! i finished 24 last weekend :(. I've been watching it for over 6 months, catching up from episode 1 all the way through to the film and the end of season 8. Awesome series, just want more, long live Jack Baur, don't do what the book says, just do what's right! oh and patch me through to the President!




9)

 Upgraded to a new Macbook Pro. So far so good, sweet piece of kit, though i didn't go for the new Retina Display versions. Mainly due to money constrains but also their lack of connectivity and no Firewire 800 port (i don't think) really put me off too so got the top-end-non-retina-display-version out there! Done!





10)

Finally, (lets make it 10!) last weekend me and Cat ended up going to the Wales comic con. Cat really wanted to go and i thought it was worth a look so we went to Wrexham for it. Met Warwick Davis and saw Boba Fett amongst others but most importantly, the voice of Johnny Bravo! (pictured). I didn't pay £10 for his autograph but i did get a picture with him but couldn't be bothered to find it. go to Facebook for more pictures on this:
http://www.facebook.com/lawrence.card

mistaken identity!?

A bit of a random one and probably the first ever post that doesn't start with:

'I haven't blogged in a while so i thought i'd.........'

but I was just searching for my blog (cause i use it that often i forget where it is.......plus i access it on my phone normally) and links such as these came up:

http://www.bulletformyvalentine.com/us/users/lawrenciumbc
http://www.1st-movers.com/my-profile/userprofile/lawrenciumbc

...amongst others, these aren't my profiles, just someone that seems to have used the same username that i tend to do.

This isn't really that mental and doesn't bother me that much, i just thought it was an interesting experiment to see how many accounts that aren't me that share this username there are, mainly because i would hardly have thought it is a name which would come to many peoples minds when choosing account names; 'lawrenciumbc' (or 'lawrence crumble' as lazy work colleagues like to call it haha!)

To be fair, as of today, the first page of user accounts from various places apart from the 2 listed above are all mine.......which is good news i suppose.

The 2nd page seems to be all me too but predominantly forum accounts when i have been stuck with something. Then this one popped up:

http://www.totalmortalkombat.com/board/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=39333&sid=224bd416c1546a57df5e8e73ff030f7a

TOTALMORTALKOMBAT?! i don't ever remember making that! but i could see it happening, im a casual mortal kombat player but don't know why i'd ever go on a website for it, well apparently i did in 2008. What alarms me most about this is under 'interests', all that is listed is 'finishing him', which, if your not into mortal kombat sounds pretty strange to say the least...... .


There you go, on the other hand maybe it was the same person who loved bullet for my valentine.

Come to think of it, maybe i did sign up on the bfmv site for some merchandise or tickets, i did used to be more of a fan than i currently am so its not out of the question and when i delve deeper on the '1st-movers' site, i realise that they created a joomla extension to auto post to facebook and twitter, so that was me.

the 3rd page is much the same as the 2nd so i stopped there and so in conclusion i don't think there is actually anyone using 'my' username, just me in the forgotten past.

........well that killed 20 minutes. Lawrenciumbc, that's me.

A mixed bag of emotions and a bit more effort please....

I'll address the effort comment first, as I haven't blogged in a while I thought I should and wish that I had fit time in to fit a few more in! I want to get back into posting (hopefully once a week at least) and I want to introduce the use of images a lot more. This will liven it up a bit and make it a bit more interesting!

The last few months have gone ok. I've launched the new comtec website (though not yet finished), stepped away from all the phoenix off season rush and gone on a host of good jobs including the tuc conference in Brighton (which included a random night where 2 colleagues decided to jump in the seas naked at about 10 at night!).

Had another decent job last week however problems with the sound recording meant I a post event dvd for the client is not up to standard and understandably my boss isn't happy. This lead to a rather strong talking to and threats of disciplinary action this morning which is where the mixed bag feelings come from. The bottom line is cover the unexpected, don't get complacent with the record and always have a backup! Sounds obvious but that's where my mistakes came from.

Another lesson learned and ultimately pre-empted this sound error was the incorrect lenses for the projection distance being incorrect on another recent job which has prompted me to want to work out the correct lenses myself for all future jobs I am involved in which require projection. After all its part of media so the media dept shouldn't take for granted the calculations by the technical dept. The issue on the particular job was fixed by moving the projectors back and the set forward and we just scraped the distance.

Phoenix has started the new season and are 4 games in and not doing amazing. Results have been fairly even with wins and losses which include a heavy 8-2 away defeat to mo lightning and the loss of the preseason local derby cup, 'the war of the roses' to Sheffield steeldogs. The team is almost completely new and therefore need to gel. On paper they look great with the best British lineup tony hand has ever constructed and an ex nhl defenceman but so far quite average on the ice. From a match night show perspective its been hard, severe lack of crew and broken equipment has held us back but hopefully it will pick up soon.

Hereford united are also struggling in the non league conference. A heavy defeat against Dartford (who?!) Seems embarrassing and things need to change fast there too!

Arsenal on the otherhand are looking good and very pleasing. A fantastic defensive start (Steve bould influence?) Along with podolski and cazorla looking great makes me think we are going to have a great season. Still undefeated so far this season. Just need giroud to get some goals on the board so we can forget and move on from van persie and the potential goalscoring void he has created (he is annoyingly joint top scorer in the prem for man united :( ).

Last weekend me and Catherine went to the Wrexham comic con where we saw/met people from game of thrones, red dwarf (made cat's day) and other randomers including Warwick Davis. It was good despite being the expected geekfest And stu and I even met the voice of johnny bravo! I also almost ran into the now elderly boba fett actor. It was interesting despite the annoying 'you can only take photos if you pay 15 quid for an autograph' which clearly only a money spinner but it damped the event a bit (I wanted a picture with Dan from eastenders/gas from call of duty!).

Looking forward to a host of potential gigs from enter shikari to parkway drive amongst others to finish the year off and a holiday in October to Berlin with Catherine will be good!

Other random bits; I've started playing mass effect 3, started watching game of thrones, finished the final 24 (:( ), my lower back pain seems to be much better after months of (free) chiro and lewis has now started uni in Burnley so I will expect him to be out and about in Manchester over the next few years.

Update

Haven't blogged in a while, I think I might go for more frequent short blogs from now on!

Over in Chester for a bit of a uni reunion night. Went well and ended up in the nostalgic rb's and yet again I felt sick in the morning. The last 4 or 5 times I have drank alcohol I have felt sick or been sick, maybe I'm not used to it anymore!

Last week I had to rush the green bullet through an moth after finding out I was overdue by 2 weeks so may still get a fine! Ended up failing on 2 rear springs and it cost a hefty 200 quid to fix :( fortunately swings and roundabouts occurred and I ended up getting a rise which made the week altogether strange.

England are doing ok in the euros, pleased with the performances so far and looking forward to the game against Italy in the quarters tomorrow and with Germany winning last night and hopefully a spain win tonight my current bet will pull through if England can do it, a nice 68 quid there hopefully. Still think  the tournament is germanys to lose but I a wierd feeling that Portugal mouth randomly scrape glory especially with ronaldos form.

Arsenal have pretty much signed giroud for 12mil. Sounds exciting after a good season in France but with podolski already coming (yes!) It might look like rvp is going to secretly go. So long as we get the price for him then I can accept that. A strong defensive player (hopefully m'villa) and get rid of the deadweight like arshavin, chamakh amongst others and the return of wilshere, I think we will have a really strong team for next season, we'll wait and see!

Also on the brink of buying an imac, I have gone on about it for so long and i just need to do it I think and the decision has been aided by the fact that my recently revived old pc now can't handle some basic cs5 features such as the brush tool cursor in PhotoShop.

In the calendar coming up with regards to work is a job in Atlanta USA which will be mad as I've really wanted to go there and also an exciting job for several weeks in London during the Olympics near the start of August so ill be out of the office a bit (there are also other jobs inbetween too) which will be good.

This one ended up being longer than I expected/promised haha.

Venice!

Yeah a bit late but went to Venice with Catherine on a mad spontaneous trip idea to fill our time off work! I think it was around 29-31st of March that we went and it was good for a short break!

We managed to get relatively inexpensive accommodation and flights (think it was around £200 each whereas normally you would be looking at double that!) which was ideal but the actual place itself was pretty expensive. Prices for food for example were around 12-20 Euros for a basic meal unless you went for a pizza which would be around 6-12 Euros and was great value for money in comparison as they were huge and tasted good!

As far as activities and attractions went, they were expensive too and we found many were churches and art galleries both of which Catherine and I aren't overly bothered about so the range of free ones more than catered for us in that respect. We found we spent our time and money on food and a bit on the water buses haha|!

An interesting thing we found is that the locals get into all the churches etc... for free and so when we asked at the hotel for prices to get into the Basilica Di San Marco for example they didn't actually know and guessed at 12 Euros. It turned out to be free and despite the queues, it moves quickly as people keep walking around.

One other thing which made me laugh was the similarities to the Assassins Creed Venice (AC2). It was quite funny to see the walls you could climb, places to hide and the architecture. The developers definitely must have had a fun reccy for it! There was even a bird on the top of a tower which gave me flashbacks/desires to go and do a leap of faith into a conveniently placed haystack (though there was no haystacks).

We seemed to walk down almost every street of the maze, armed with a small pocket guide map we picked up at the airport it was definitely a good way to see it all and walk through all the different districts. It meant we had more money to stop and have a beer when we got to a nice 'campo' (squares amongst the streets).

There's lots to see any way, even if you don't go in much like us but definitely don't go to La Giudecca (island to the side of Venice). We thought we'd go there just for fun and it was boring, there was nothing there apart from houses and one ice cream shop. I wish we had used that water bus ticket to go to a different place instead!

Overall it was good fun and definitely worth going to see at some point in your life. The only thing i would say, is don't go for much longer than 2 full days unless you have infinite amounts of cash and love churches and art!

You can see a load of photos i took on my Flickr, here:
Venice Flickr Set

Phoenix awards 2011/12

Haven't blogged in a while we usual but the last few weeks have been.pretty.hard with work. Comtec getting a lot of work this time of year and so been working long hours. Plus it is the end of the season and its all manic! Tonight was the end of season awards and one of the first comtec jobs without any senior technical or media people. Good experience, plenty of room for improvement but had a few of the new lads from the rink who did ok but i learnt a lot about briefing and directing the crew which is all good!

Barcelona review

It's probably a bit late but I've not had chance to say anything about the 2 day trip!

Overall it was good, the hostel was quite impressive (I'll add a link when I get chance) with friendly staff, good facilities and in a good location. Despite the fact that it was fairly difficult to find as it isn't really sign posted too well.

Found myself waking up the first morning in just my boxer shorts and a t-shirt just on top of the bed and not in the covers haha! It also happened to be 1pm which reflected the state of the night before. That was our first night, where we bought loads of cheap 'xbeca' beer from the local supermarket and played scrabble with some of the other guests before going out. We met an Argentine girl who was travelling and could do a lot of the translation for us which was useful so the restaurants and bars etc were fairly easy. We did however end up paying 12euros for a beer in the hard rock cafe! Not ideal.

I did speak and learn some Spanish while I was there:
Ninguna salsa port favor!
This became the saying of the weekend for me! Translated to 'no sauce thankyou' I think haha.

We had seen the sagrada de familia during the day and strolled about Barcelona again all day and Geoff decided that we should buy a bottle of jagermeister for the final night ahead. Was a good idea at the time and we went back and destroyed it with plenty more xbecas (ignoring the fact we had to leave for the bus to get to the airport at something like 6.30am). We tried to see the fountain display at the palace but when we got there the fountains were having maintenance work done to them so the display was not on, I'm just glad I got to see them first time round! We stayed at the palace for a bit though, buying dodgey estrella damn cans off some guy who hid them in bushes (there was loads of sellers like that about, blatantly illegal haha). This was also where i almost lost my wallet in the bushes whilst having a wee, we had to jump a small stone wall to go and my wallet must have slipped out of my pocket! Incredibly lucky I managed to retrace my steps and find it! Great views before we ended up in a bar some students took us to. There we had loads of tequilla shots, like 8 or so!

On the way back we had to carry Nick and we had countless offers for cheap sex of which we had to stop Nick from trying to negotiate some haha. Got back and hit the coffee as we thought we would miss the bus and our flights if we slept so Kyle and I stayed up drinking the free coffee and talking to the Venezuelan guy who worked at the hostel. He just told us about all the women he sleeps with, scrolling through loads of photos on his Facebook.

That just about wraps up the trip in an epic blog! See the photos on my Facebook.

Barcelona

Secured a move to Barcelona.....though not in the same sense as Cesc Fabregas or Thierry Henry, more in the sense of 2 and a half days!

Going with a group of friends, there are 5 of us going on a cheap Ryanair flight and some dodgy hostel to satisfy our needs. We fly out in the morning at 6:40 and arrive back on Saturday just before midday.

As far as plans go, i don't think there are any yet, or maybe some that i don't know of, but i've been before so i'm not too worried about not seeing the sights and ending up drinking copious amounts of beer! With that all in mind, deciding how much to take was quite tricky, though accommodation is yet to be paid for (around £9) and we need to get a bus to Barcelona from the airport (23 Euros-ish return) so that's just over 30 gone already (flights were £36 return). I'm taking £144 worth of euros (160 Euros) so i think i'm left with around £55 a day, lets see how far that goes....!

Giving blood!

I am due to give blood for the 2nd time now. I am blood type A+ (which is 1 in 3 i think) and i managed to fill the bag in around 7 minutes on my first go several months ago. The nurse was very happy with my veins haha so i'm a little worried if i have an accident and start bleeding, i don't think i will have long to be saved haha!

The first time i gave blood was back in September I think and it was prompted by my mum's experience whereby a simple everyday operation went wrong and almost cost her her life :(. Booking it in was a pain as i went through a host of problems from being too late because i couldn't find the place, my name wasn't on the list and on the final attempt i had missed a message (as my voicemail hadn't come through) cancelling my appointment. Lucky as i explained to the guy on the desk about the bad luck i'd been having he managed to wangle me in and i went ahead with it.

It was an odd feeling but a feeling i expected. I felt uncomfortable with it but thought i was fine until the nurses view differed and she called over for help and they raised my legs and put a cold flannel on my head claiming i went green. Slightly embarrassing, especially as i was with my friend Fi at the time who tried to get hers done (but they had cancelled all appointments for the day due to staff shortages). Anyway, got it done and now i've got to do it again!

Moving Home......

I have been looking at houses now for much of the past week or so with Catherine and it looks like we have chosen the area of Withington to live. With my current house contract due to run out on the 31st of this month and Catherine due to start her new job on the 16th, it is a convenient time to move and to choose somewhere bigger.

Living in Chorlton has been good but its a bit quiet in terms of who i know and much of my activities in Manchester circulate further east. The buses from Withington are excellent as they get the Fallowfield student buses which go every few minutes, but it doesn't retain the student stigma of Fallowfield, more so the upmarket area of Didsbury the same distance the other way. So convenient for town, friends and a good mix of places nearby to cater for all my 'moods' makes it ideal. It's also technically closer to work (in Openshaw) but in terms of time to get there it is much the same due to the odd road systems and the traffic in Longsight. Finding a quick way through is a small challenge over the coming weeks!

We've looked at around 10 houses altogether including some in Chorlton and Salford before we chose Withington but at the start of the week we made our decision and subsequently focused our efforts there seeing at least 5 properties. The one we have gone for is £650 rent a month (split between 2 is much cheaper than my current £375 for 1) and we actually saw it on Tuesday night with the tennants showing us round. Tennants being the 'salespeople' is certainly a big plus as they are under no pressure to lie and have the actual experience of living in the property. As they hadn't had any more viewings booked until next week so far, we saw it an educated risk to leave it one more day and look round the 4 we had planned on Wednesday (yesterday), as the tennant would have to have been given at least 24 hours notice prior to a viewing so we at east knew we had that.

Some of the properties came close, you can see that it is very competitive in this area as they were all at generally a good standard so it was the little things that made the winner the winner. The agency fees were paid today, a rip off at £200 as they aren't even managing the property, they are just advertising it but we felt we had to really. All of our viewings are with agencies as we don't know any landlords and £100 each is about average :(.

We will see how the move will come along in the next few weeks as the tennants move out on the 28th and we need to get the paperwork sorted! Catherine has decided to film some bits of it too which will be interesting......

.....oh yeah i think i forgot to say, its a 2 bedroom flat!

The Return of Titi!

Ok Henry is back and played his first game in 2 years for us to commence his 2 month loan from New York Red Bulls in the FA Cup aagainst Leeds. I didn't see the game but saw the winning goal (1-0), scored by the man himself and at 34 years old, you wouldn't have thought he had degraded at all!

Apparently 'not the same player', as he describes, he doesn't take players on as much which is understandable but the goal was a pure lesson in striking masterclass. Surrounded by completely bewildered and unaware defenders he lurked along the defensive line then Alex Song played a perfect pinpoint pass to his feet just as he begins his run into space. Controlled beautifully and finished with class, typical Henry low in the opposite corner across the keeper, defence were no where.

Great win,great start back for Arsenal (227th goal) - even if it was only against Championship opposition.

Welcome back Thierry!

Xmas 2011

Overdue on many things!

Ok i have several things i was meaning to blog about but just haven't had the time!

First, xmas review; it was good, had plenty of time to see family and friends back in Hereford (almost 2 weeks).....ahhh to not work in retail!

Highlights; presents-wise i got some cool stuff. Originally i was quite adament and stubborn that i did not want anything and most importantly JUNK, i was hit by a barrage of 'but i need to get you something.....' and so i had to take matters into my on hands and make a list. After scraping the barrel i found a few things i wanted and so overall i got some good stuff; trainers, NHL11, an iron, Casio scientific calculator and a sick Gerber multitool!

oh, and this.......

Got one at work and it is awesome, makes washing up so easy so i had to get one! At first my mum didn't believe me, i sent her my list with links on and she sent this link back with the comment 'are you sure about this?' thinking i had supplied the wrong link and meant something else haha!

Anyway, caught up with some old local school/college mates which was good, ended up playing football for the first time in a long while as i've hardly played at all since i've been in Manchester :( so was knackered fairly easily after that! But let me tell you.....the magic is still there (haha)!

The local pub also reopened in my village (The Volunteer). I had probably only been to it around twice before in my life but now that's doubled as we ended up there for a few drinks one night and the family went there for one on Xmas Eve. Overall its done nicely, hopefully it can stay for a good while!

Had to go to Chester for the 28th as Cat was working her last 2 days of work at HBOS and would subsequently be on her own for New Years eve. We ended up spending time with mates from Uni and New Years actually turned into a decent night, despite the bright idea to go to Wetherspoons just before midnight as it was dead and we could get to the bar. Little did we know it was due to shut bang on 12 and the New Year was greeted by a bouncer tapping me on the shoulder and saying 'drink up, we're closed!' (as i'm downing the rest of my bottle of Koppaberg). Then headed to Havanas, it was free in and not ridiculously busy considering the occasion which seemed to round it off fairly decently.

Overall, a good and constructive holiday period!

(the location of the post is Marden but im actually in Manchester cause i'm late with this post.....)