On reflection today about this Blog, I realised that, because of the following…

• It’s a bit “out of the way” from my main personal site
• This WordPress theme is laughably out of date (by over 15 years!)

…it’s time for a new home.

And what better home that my main personal site? Well, hopefully you can’t think of a better home, because that is where the new blog location is!

See you at patscullion.co.uk/blog :-D

…and no blog posts.

Oops.

It’s fair to say that 2023 was… a busy year. Despite this, I felt like I was treading water through much of it… and it’s how I ended the year.

Now we’ve started 2024, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on 2023 and see whether it was as “meh” as I’ve come to tell myself it was, or whether, actually, it was a little better than that.

And you know what? It was a mixed bag.

To simplify the previously-written load of rambling, here’s a list of “things I’m happy with” and “things I’m not happy with” :D

Things I’m Happy With

• Work – going well, clients happy, no worries there. Plus, websites for Studio Scully and my personal site have been updated at last!
• Savings – growing a bit – cheers clients!
• Home life – good, chilled (in general) :)
• Learning piano – I know enough to be able to read basic sheet music, play both-handed, understand a bit more theory, and play (after some trial and error) and am making my own melodies up
• Squage Party – restarted it and moved to 1 hour each Friday – it’s fun, and we’ve got a great little community
• Keeping in touch with Friends – keeping in touch with various friends back in the UK/Ireland via Slack and Discord has been great. plus had friends come visit Maastricht and it was lovely to hang out!
• MegaGame Help – I helped my friend Chris from Very Large Huge Games with graphics (posters for Aftermath and the upcoming First Contact: Rain of Terror, in-game turn timer styling and on-screen ‘news bulletin’ intros), and tech-opping of a couple of Mega Games in London.
• Christmas Quiz – we did an online quiz this year on video, 15 teams of friends and family played and it went really well, with a custom web app for answers/marking. Very happy with that
• Computer games – decided on a cool idea for a game, and started doing game documentation / research / doodles
• Sunday Internet Radio – It’s been fun, and although I was a bit burned out during the latter part of the year, listening back to a “best of” this evening made me realise we’ve been having a LOT of fun doing our silly little hobby in 2023
• Album mastering – helped my friend Andy Drysdale by mastering his album The Old Morris Dancer.
• Rest – We’ve started going to a local spa once a week and it’s… ah, so lovely mentally and physically
• Mental health – Started working on that, so hopefully that’ll keep getting better in 2024!

Things I’m Not Happy With

• Weight – ho boy. Too much food. Not enough exercise.
• Tiredness – need to get more sleep so I can be more motivated!
• Procrastination – see: not having blogged since Jan 2023
• Computer Games – need to actually make something – see: Procrastination
• Piano – I stopped lessons after the summer break, as I had a bad concert performance (which hit my confidence) and I felt the pieces in the last few lessons were getting too far beyond me, plus work started getting very busy so I didn’t find the time to practice things like sight reading.
• Keeping in touch with friends – there are some dear friends I’ve been terrible at keeping in touch with. Need to sort that out!
• Keeping in touch with family – ditto!
• Feeling Settled – several years here and we’re still not settled, really. Don’t feel part of the community, and don’t feel motivated to learn the language. Plus fireworks. JFC. Just… don’t. I’m very tired right now through us being in a car with our dog from 9:30pm to 2:30am last night to get away from the war zone.

Looking to the future…

Here’s what I’m hoping for in 2024:

• More fun here – Doing more together here outside of work
• Pastures new – Moving to Ireland or the UK or… who knows!
• Computer games – Make a load of progress and start SHARING the progress too, via methods such as…
• Blogging – Doing more blogging to share with you what I’m doing! Also improve this terrible old blog theme :D
• Piano – Restart lessons but slow it down to focus on filling gaps in my knowledge and improving my confidence
• Weight – Lose weight through exercise and better eating – and more sleep
• Staying in touch – Keep in more regular contact with family and those friends who aren’t in Slack/Discord

Speaking of sleep, I’ve been writing this for over an hour now and it’s late. Work tomorrow!

See you soon – I hope – and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Pat

This on?

So. It’s been a while, hasn’t it! A whole… *checks*… GOOD LORD.

So, erm. How’s your past 11 years been? Up to much?

Me?

Yeah, a few bits and pieces. Maybe I’ll fill you in later. For now, I just figured I’d write something and see if this WordPress install even works anymore.

UPDATE: Apparently it does! Hooray!

Pat

So, I found some software to convert SWF files to video format.

You’ll probably wish I hadn’t:

Sorry :)

Pat

Hello there!

How was your Christmas?
…Really?
…Ooh, sounds good.
…Mine? Yeah it was great thanks.
…Looking forward to New Year?
…I know, I know, but the anticlimax doesn’t matter if you’re having a party, right?
…Hahah yeah.

(Who the hell are you talking to, Pat? – Squage)

The voices in my head, of course. It’s no odder than talking to you.

(…hmm… true. Shall we just get on with things? – Squage)

Good thinking.

Today I decided to play with drawing faces, and I though I’d upload the result for you to see. So… here you go:

Girl with a Ponytail

Girl Smiling

Stern Man

Woman looking up

Hope ya like!

Toodles,

Pat

Yesterday at Uni the rather talented and nice bloke Seb Ly (seb.ly) came to talk to us Digital Media Design students about creative coding.

He showed various examples of cool effects created using simply JavaScript, which, basically, floored me. It was awesome. For the first time in many years I was properly inspired to get coding and create.

He quite rightly pointed out that if you’re learning through making awesome, fun stuff, it’s SO much easier to learn and be motivated than if you’re learning towards stuff you don’t give a rat’s ass about.

Yesterday afternoon as a result I coded this in JavaScript for a bit of fun (oh and then wrote loads of stuff down about a potential Squage JavaScript game…):

Particle Bouncing Things!

(The code’s a mess, but I was just playing :) )

Toodles,

Pat

There’s an awful lot of cutting out, sticking in and scribbling notes over for something that’s supposed to be digital.

That’s why today my desk looks like this:

Fun fun fun!

Pat

All aboard the misery boat! Yep, it’s another “Pat’s playing around with Flash” thing. Nothing much to it, as with the paralax thing, but this one excitingly has sound. And a disappointed looking ferry:

ALL ABOARD!

Toodles,

Pat

As a way of avoiding looking at the same old damn designs for an evening, I decided to have a play with some basic paralax scrolling in Flash:

Click On This To Have Your Mind Blown *

Hooray for a creative Wednesday evening!

Toodles,

Pat

(* If oddly jerky basic Flash animations blow your mind)

Well, it’s been quite a while since I last blogged.

It’s been a busy few weeks, filled largely with Uni work but also with some pretty epic social moments thrown in: primarily a weekend at Alton Towers and a visit back to Essex involving staying up til 11am and going to an engagement party on 30 minutes sleep. Some more local fun stuff’s been going on too and some Uni-mates-based piss ups are approaching nice-n-fast!

As I write this, I’m in the 5th week of Uni, with one more week of the first module (Visual Communications) to go – and hence deadlines a go-go next Friday. Once it’s complete I’ll probably dump some of the work online so you can see what we’ve been getting up to.

The following Monday starts the next module (Visual Language), which is a “competition brief”. I’m still not entirely sure what that means. I guess there’s a competition and, as it’ll last 6 weeks, it’s “a brief” rather than “brief”.

Oh and all the while the “cultural and critical studies” module churns along, involving lots of the stuff that I’ve no experience and, to be honest, interest in: reading up about artists and art movements in various books and on various web sites. That’s right: I love drawing and doodling, but I’m not particularly into history of art. That’ll change, I guess (/hope). But hey, come on: the last time I wrote an essay was when I was doing my GCSEs. (And you’ve never claimed to be anything other than pig-ignorant! – Squage). Oh, thanks for popping in! (Pleasure! – Squage)

In case you’re wondering, I’m generally doing a 40 hour week (including coursework outside the classes) – plus, when I’m not shattered, some (but not many, yet) other creative bits in my spare time. So it’s not a total doss. Hopefully that’ll make you feel better about your taxes, although given I’m paying for everything myself bar council tax I guess that’ll only make you feel better if you live in Brighton & Hove…

Anyway, other than the course I still like it down here, not least because I bought a £5 sandwich toaster from Sainsbury’s. It’s made my breakfasts amazing.

I am nothing if not rock and roll.

BYE!

Pat

P.S. I finally get broadband on Thursday. It’ll mean blogging without walking a mile first or without praying I don’t go over my quota on Orange’s incredibly generous 500MB monthly mobile broadband limit. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do with all this freedom! Probably just watch the 10 hour version of Trollolol on Youtube…