Bulk says:
I’ll be in charge of google etc before you know it
Ben says:
hehe
Bulk says:
or you know, not
Bulk says:
but its fun to have goals
Ben says:
mine are a little more modest, just runs portions of google
Bulk says:
oh thats a better plan
Ben says:
porn.google.com
Ben says:
porn aggregator
Ben says:
patent pending
Bulk says:
more thn a patent pending, I would imagine
Ben says:
erection pending
Ben says:
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Bulk says:
hhahahahahahhaaha
Ben says:
haha
Bulk says:
high five

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.

On a lighter note – 17 days to oblivion!

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.

I am really looking forward to the next installment of the Elderscrolls series, Oblivion, which comes out late next month. I’ve been waiting for this release for over a year and from what I have read, it has definitely been worth the wait!

Well, its back to cleaning the house before the missus gets back, how did it get so messy?

I start University this month, 2 weeks and 2 days to be exact. I’m a little nervous, it will be the first time I’ve been taught something in a class for almost 5 years. Plus I’m moving almost as far away from home as possible within England, which in some ways isn’t a bad thing. A fresh new start. The only thing that will be familiar in my new surroundings is my girlfriend who’ll be studying in Brighton with me too. So I’ll try my best to make some mad University life posts with drunken pictures etc!

It was also my 21st birthday a few days ago, I’ve had better birthdays to be honest. I guess it’s all downhill from now on in!

Before you ask, no I didn’t take any pictures, but I did have a good time!

Also let me say, for those of you that are single (which is a depressingly small amount, these days) western Europe in the summer = WINNER.

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?

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