Warning: This is highly reflective, VERY self serving, and above all LONG. I have a year of blogging to make up for and this will probably have to last you till well in to next year too.

I set my self a target back in February that I would be making money as a PHP programmer by the end of the year. The clock is ticking and the year is almost over. Did I finally achieve my dreams, or did I fall flat on my face?

Every story has a begging, and this one is no different…

SIX YEARS AGO…

I was going to be an actor. I was a fresh faced 18 years old, and I had just finished a two year course on performing arts. I had gotten top marks, and had been accepted to a number of universities, and was all set to go and study performing arts & drama, and become an actor.

But something was missing…

SEVEN YEARS AGO…

I had known for quite a while that I was interested in computers and the internet. I had been playing with the web since its infancy, back when AOL literally WAS the web. But it was nothing more than hobby really, something I did in my spare time, and only on school or college computers. Things continued much in that manner until 1999, when I finally got my own PC.

I was enthralled. I drank it all in and learned all I could. I very quickly got involved in level design for Half-Life, and became part of a cool site I had discovered called Wavelength. I’ve told this story elsewhere, but suffice it to say at this point I wanted to be a level designer. I had it all planned out. I was going to teach my self all the skills I needed and then move to America where the real work was….

SIX YEARS AGO… (AGAIN!)

But I was still training to be an actor. In the back of my head I think I suspected level design was always only going to be a pipe dream, but my conscious mind didn’t have a clue. I kept on with my acting training, and in my spare time did all the level design I could. A year after I first got my PC, I was ready to go to university. I was sorting out my money, and preparing to pack up my stuff.

Something clicked. My conscious mind finally realised what my unconscious mind had been screaming at me for years: I was a crap actor, and I would never make it. I might have enjoyed it in some ways, but I didn’t have desire to really make it worth the time. (I’m exaggerating here a bit for effect, the realisation actually came over a number of months).

I dropped out, and got my self working for a large cab company in London called Dial-A-Cab.

I spent quite a bit of time playing around online, and worked on a few levels and Mods, but I was never able to really finish anything. I told my self (and others) all kinds of excuses as to why I wasn’t getting any real work done, but in the end I eventfully came to the painful conclusion that I wasn’t really cut out for it, and that I would never be a level designer.

Long before my discovery that I would never be a level designer, I had taken full control of Wavelength and was working out how to re-launch with a new face and backend system. Again this story has been told, but in the end a buddy of mine named rkzad stepped up to the plate and made TWL 3.0 using PHP. The work rkzad did was outstanding, but I wanted more and rkzad was just too busy to oblige. If I was going to get the features, I was finally going to have to put up, or shut up, and learn PHP my self.

I was enthralled. I drank it all in and learned all I could. Like level design before, I couldn’t get enough, and spent as much time as I could learning and using PHP. This time was different. This time I actually got things done, completed projects, and on top of that had a blast doing it. I certainly have my share of incomplete projects, and ironically Wavelength is one of them, but unlike level design I hadn’t given up. Learning progressed…

TWO YEARS AGO…

Dial-a-cab sucked. Most of the people there were great, but the company left a lot to be desired. On top of that I felt under utilised and totally bored, even with a promotion. I wanted something better, and I finally had something I was good at.

Me and two of my rl friends came up with a plan for a great new online service for actors. The website would need a complicated backend system to control its automatic nature. It would be my greatest challenge to date, and the ultimate test of if I had finally found my niche in life. I think it came out pretty well. In my head, I had passed the test, and I had found what I wanted to do with my self. I wanted to be a programmer…

10 MONTHS AGO…

The challenge was set…

3 MONTHS AGO…

I started looking in earnest for a new job at the start of September, and while I received a number of calls from various employment agencies, actual interviews were very thin on the ground. As you can imagine, the entire process was extremely frustrating. I knew that I had the skill to do the jobs that I was going for, and I even had the proof with Actors CV, but my lack of commercial experience was holding me back.

Dial-a-Cab was becoming a worse place to work day by day, so I needed to get out. I was almost at the point where I was willing to give up my dream of being a paid programmer and go in to the computer support business as a first line tech, something I swore to my self a long time ago I would never do.

However, hope was on the horizon.

I had a promising interview with a huge company called Ladbrokes. If you’re in the UK, you’ll know exactly who that is, but for those of you who don’t know, Ladbrokes is a huge betting company, both on and offline. Basically it’s a huge corporate environment, where I would be a tiny cog in a huge machine. I had my first, and then second interview with them.

While I was waiting to hear back from them, I had yet ANOTHER interview with a much smaller company that goes by the name of Action Sports Media. ASM or Factory Media as it is now (they merged with two other companies) is a medium sized Magazine publishing company. They have 12 or 14 magazines, all dedicated to various “extreme” sports, such as surfing and snowboarding. They were after someone to produce a number of PHP/MySQL projects from scratch, and I would be the only programmer working there. I had my first, and then second interview with them.

You can probably see where this is going. Both companies offered me a job. I couldn’t believe it. I had gone from nothing, to two job offers in the space of two weeks. What a turn around!

Now all I had to do was pick which one I wanted to accept!

The two positions couldn’t have been more diametrically opposed. Ladbrokes meant I would have had a very structured environment, with someone telling me exactly what to do, when and how. It was also a very corporate environment; everyone was wearing smart business attire – shirt and ties.

ASM was a very free form position. I would have a huge say in how the system progresses, and ultimate control of what code does and doesn’t go in to my work. Of course I would still have a manager, but he would be taking my advice a lot more on programming matters.

There was only really one choice to be made. Action Sports Media LTD (now Factory Media) would be the one.

I had achieved my goals. I was going to be a professional PHP programmer (or scripter, if you’re Megasaxon).

PRESENT DAY…

I’ve been working at Factory Media for 2 weeks now, and it’s the best decision I ever made. I’ve learned a lot of new programming techniques in only two weeks, and come the New Year I hope to learn many more. We have a number of exciting projects under development, which I obviously can’t talk about, but the moment they are public I’ll blog about it. Probably.

I would like to say thank you to rkzad and Megasaxon for being the two people who primarily got me in to PHP and helped me through the early days of learning the basics.

At any rate, I achieved the goal I set my self back in February, and for the first time in what seems like a very long time, I couldn’t be happier.

That was long.

.... Bulk makes a post.

So, it’s that time of year! Time for a bulky flavoured update. I won’t bullshit about grand ambitions to make more updates in future, because frankly that ain’t gonna happen. I’ve just been so mad busy over the past year that everything has fallen by the wayside. I have, more or less officially given up on any grand idea I may have had in the past about being a level designer—with my current workload it just isn’t ever going to happen. I think it’ll just stay a little thing I dabble in every once in a while, as a hobby.

If there was someone I trusted enough to hand over Wavelength to, at this point I probably would because I can’t see my self with enough time to ever complete “Falcon” aka TWL 4.0 which would essentially eliminate full time content producers and make TWL a truly community driven site. I don’t even have time enough to update the site as it is even now. Meh, maybe one day.

At any rate, my long term career plans have now turned more towards the route of programming. While I don’t (yet) have a huge amount of skill with any “hardcore” language, I consider my self good enough at PHP/SQL to make a go of it at the level of actually getting paid for it by a real company. And now that I have a good grounding in PHP I am hoping that it means I will be able to pick up languages like Perl, Python, perhaps even a C variant or two. We shall see. At any rate I intend to be earning money doing that by the end of the year.

My company, Actors CV is going quite well, we have 8 customers now, which I know sounds like a tiny amount but this is more or less a totally new idea, so we’re not expecting big things soon. Saying that, we have a few ideas to help things along so maybe things will pick up.

So, that’s it for now. Maybe I’ll do another update soon, but probably I won’t.

So I guess I don’t really need to tell you what happened in London today. For those of you that don’t know, I’m not even going to dignify you with a link. Uh, wait. Damn.

Anyway, I really post something about all this because I do actually live in London, and this does directly affect me. I live about 20 minutes walk from the Liverpool Street/Aldgate Underground explosion.

I was awoken about 10ish which was just after the final attack, so I spent pretty much all morning (attempting) to ring people and watching the TV.

I actually had a friend that was on the platform at Liverpool Street, which was a scant 100 meters from the blast there. Although we didn’t realise how close he was to the blast at the time, he came scarily close to the explosion, which is just plain freaky.

Thinking about all that’s gone on, almost literally on my front door, it’s all just too much to take in right now. I’m not scared, I’m not angry; I don’t know what I am right now. Coupled with the fact I had a really busy night at work, I’m pretty much just shell-shocked. (Yes, I still had to work, and let me tell you working at a cab firm when the transport infrastructure in a major metropolitan city is out, is a very special experience).

So, how was your day?

Well this is pretty much the new Menkeys.net. I have a fair amount of tweaking to do before its all “good”, so to speak, should be done by the end of tomorow.

BTW if its 3 months later, and this is the only post: I apolagise.

Not to overshadow the fact Ben actually posted something here (Fuck, he posted something!) but I’ve come to a decision in my life that I think probably deserves at least something resembling a blog entry. I’m going to quit university for this year. Am I dropping out altogether? Probably not, I’ll re-enrol for next year. So why on earth am I doing it? Well, even most of those that know me REAL well don’t know I’m currently in the process of starting a company. It’s nothing to do with gaming and not really of any interest to the Gaming/Half-Life community, so I won’t be going in to details here (and also of course the company isn’t launched, can’t be giving away industry secrets now!). Suffice it to say that those things have taken a priority over my degree course which is/was going to take many more years and currently isn’t very rewarding.

What does this mean for Wavelength? Well I’m going to now be focusing more of my energy on this company, but as part of this company is a fairly complex and involved PHP backend system. Once that code is finished a fair amount of it can probably be used to power Wavelength, and the experience gained from creating the system will help me hopefully finish off the rest with ease.

To summarise: I quit university for this year. Starting company. Possibly good for Wavelength.

I don’t know what it is, but I enjoy going for a nice long walk.

In the last 6 days I’ve been for 6 long walks, all lasting between 45 mins to 2 hours. For some reason there is nothing I currently find more relaxing than to put on the ipod, and go for a long stroll. I’m sure its something to do with clearing the mind or some shit, but I find it useful for ordering my thoughts and getting my shit together, or thinking about things that need to be.. thinked.. about.

I normally walk through the city as its literally just up the road from me, and thanks to all that cash an awful lot of money is spent on the buildings. That means pretty things to look at, which as a (wannabe) level designer is quite useful. I want to get a small little digital camera soon that is decent quality so I can snap some reference pics. I think they’d be quite nice. Yep.

Given what I expect to be many advances in medical science in the next few years, I think a life expectancy of 90 is not unreasonable. I turned 23 a few hours ago. Given the previous expected life expectancy I mentioned, that puts me at roughly the quarter way mark. 1/4th of my life gone.

1/4th.

And what have I achieved in my 23 years and 3.3 hours of my life? Quite frankly, a depressingly small amount. I mean sure, I’ve done things, I’ve created stuff, but is any of that enough to justify the 23 and (checks watch) 3.4 hours of my life?

I don’t know.

I’ve still got lots I want to do, many many ambitions I’ve yet to fulfil, yet somehow they seem to get pushed to the side while I do things that I need to get out of the way before I can go about fulfilling those ambitions. Is it just me that has so much trouble achieving what I want to achieve? Is there some special trick to the whole “life” thing someone forgot to tell me? What’s the secret?

23 years and 3.5 hours down. Do I have enough time left?

Ack. 4 months is a rather long time to not post anything, and as I am sure you will all agree, something I should be quite ashamed of. I’ve been a busy little bunny doing various things that all conspire to take me one way or another away from what I love best (The internet, and level design).

Real work, mostly. I spend 4 days a week now at my “day” job, although I got a promotion in early September, the days working there are a severe dent to mental my capacities (such as they are). After coming back from a day of working there I can just about manage to sit in a computer chair for 6 hours and vegetate before sleeping. Joy.

I’m also back in full Open University swing, entering the third of what looks like it will be a 6 year (6!!) course. More joy.

All this isn’t to say I haven’t done things I’m happy about. I’ve actually been running with a few friends of mine a website design/hosting company that although isn’t time consuming in the strictest sense, those hours spent working on client websites are a draw on my precious time.

I’ve also managed to find my love of level design, buried way deep down, and dusted the old girl off. I worked on one map already and finished it off as much as I felt I could before pretty much discarding it (It was a good idea, and I may revisit it, but I’ve been out of practice for so long the first few maps will probably never see the light of day). I’m working on a second map which if things carry on the way they are at the moment I wont get to work on for another 6 weeks or so. Yet more joy.

Last but not least, Wavelength. Ooohhh Wavelength how I have spurned thee. It’s become quite popular over the last few months and weeks drawing in several new forum members a day and receiving quite a few page views more than the previous months which is all just fantastic but I’ve got so many plans to improve the backend, to improve the front end, to improve ALL of it, not to mention writing content for it! And I just Have. No. Time. Damn it.

There are other changes in my personal life too. Big, massive changes. But that’s still a work in progress so I’d like to save it for another post, and I promise I’ll try and make sure that’s not in 4 months time. Probably.

Steve is coming to London again on monday. I’ll post something then.

Two fire fighters died at the top of my street this morning, about 3 hours after I posted the news below. It’s quite big news here in London, because no fire fighters have died in 11 years here. There are loads of news crews at the top of my street, and the main UK/London news websites are carying the story. I managed to get out there this morning after hearing about it on the radio, I took the snap below:

The road is still closed off almost 10 hours after the fire started.. I guess it won’t re-open for a while