Reboot

Ok, so now it seriously has been a while, and I'm not talking the kind of while that last a few weeks without a post. I'm talking,

nearly 3 YEARS.

So what happened?

Well, I got a job in an interesting bar working with my sister, then moved behind the scenes into the bar's kitchen making pizzas for a year and covering a lady on maternity leave (not with the pizza), then popped back out onto the bar, heading back behind the scenes into the cellar every week to do the line clean. I get to wear goggles to protect my precious eyeballs from corrosive chemicals.

Yay, science!

And that about brings us up to date with what I've been doing professionally, but...

As far as this blog is concerned, I've basically been sat around for a year wondering how to fix my laptop or whether to just buy a new one after an online banking security "Rapport software update" rendered my beautiful XPS M1530 essentially comatosed. Then when I finally did learn how to wipe and reinstall a new OS on the old girl, installing only things like antivirus, GIMP, Blender3D, and a nearly unrecognisable (to me, yeah it had been a while) Unity3D on top, I only had her running for a few months before the screen stopped displaying things properly.

But what could I expect, she's a 7.5 year old laptop. It's not like I grew up in the 90's with my dad's old MS-DOS computer still working after probably more than 10 yea-

OH WAIT.

Nevermind, at least thanks to the world of Moore's Law I will probably be able to afford something just as good or better for like half the price or less.

If you're wondering what I'm typing on now (and you definitely aren't), it's a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 that I bought from a Tesco supermarket for about £130 in 2013, and it's probably more powerful than what Nasa had available to them when they put men on the moon.

Yay, Moore's Law! 

But technical difficulties are probably the least of my worries in the realm of productivity when I have a boyfriend that owns a PS4 and plenty of time in which to play Terraria or Nom Nom Galaxy and watch things on Netflix like QI, Wonders of the Universe with Brian Cox, Orphan Black, and all of the SloMo guys, CrashCourse, SciShow, VSauce2, and Polygon's Monster Factory that I can handle.

Honestly, last night I dreamt a fresh cadaver had his main skeleton removed and in the lower legs were rows of teeth - as if underneath it all, legs are actually just a different version of a jaw -

And as I explained this to my Sam this morning I pranced swiftly into a sentence about how DNA kinda of works in hierarchical layers like a company with some genes saying, "make an eye here" and other genes under them saying, "make the eye look like this" and others saying, "make the lens inside of the eye that looks like that be like this".

If you took the gene from a species, e.g. a mouse, that says, "make an eye" and spliced it into a different species', e.g. fly, embryo where the leg would develop, thinking, "Hey, imagine a fly with a mouse eyeball on its leg hurrhurrhurr...", what would actually happen is the fly would grow an eye on its leg - but not a mouse eye, with safety goggles to protect it from all the science going on. No, the fly's own DNA would inform the cells what kind of eye to grow on the leg.

Somebody actually did this.

It's like, why do I know these things? I'm just a barmaid, right?

Yep. A barmaid. In 2016's Great Britain. Yay, technology! 

Follow this blog to see whether I start growing eyeballs on barfly knees, or if you like Twitter,  you can always follow me @CharGyse. Although it's mostly just reposting pictures from my instagram.

Attention Twitter Users: Impersonations

Hello! Just to let you know, my Twitter handle is @CharGyse
The Twitter account @CharGyse_ (see the underscore _ ? ) is a FAKE CLONE, an impersonation account. 

I'm hoping none of you pay any attention to anything that account tweets in my name. I believe it's one of the hundreds of fake accounts people create to sell followers to others.

Now excuse me, I've some investigating to do.

New blog

I've set up a new blog over at chargyse.wordpress.com where I can write on a broader variety of topics without feeling like this blog is changing too much. If you find I haven't written here for a while, check out there :)

Authenticity and Professionalism

Last week I did an Explore Enterprise Course with The Prince's Trust. One of the points they tried to make was on branding, marketing and professional image.

The lady held up two signs, each made of A4 paper in a poly-pocket, that said:

" Eggs for sale.
    fresh eggs   "

One was handwritten, legibly, in blue felt pen. One was printed out in a bold Arial font. She asked us all which sign we liked best.

She was surprised to find that at least four of us preferred the hand-written sign, instead of the "more professional, printed out one."

It was quite funny, but very interesting. I'm sure in the past I might have thought the one printed off the computer was more professional (like say, when I was a seven year old), but there is a large section of society that demands a more authentic version of "professional".

I think she made her point, but not quite in the way she intended.

Those of us who preferred the handwritten sign said the computer printed sign made us wonder whether these eggs were as fresh as they say. Why does someone with fresh eggs have time to faff around with printers? Their eggs did not seem free-range, even though they possibly were.

And here's another point I felt but didn't quite find the right words for at the time: Why on earth did they pick Arial? It could just be that the person in question doesn't really understand fonts the way most people involved in graphics do. Which is fine. You don't have to know anything about fonts and graphics to use a printer. But I want to buy eggs from someone cooler. My boyfriend said later, it would be even better if the sign were made of blackboard and chalk.

Alright guys, that's all for now. Here's your reward for making it through the text. Thanks to 5ifty2wo for showing me this.



Follow this blog for more pearls of apparently not obvious wisdom, or follow me on Twitter @CharGyse if that's more your thing.

Being a graduate with no job feels like being a salmon.

This morning I woke up bright and early. I needed to give myself enough time to walk south towards the Magic Roundabout. There I was to attend a meeting of great importance, and I needed to get there early. Just over a dozen young people, between the ages of 16 and 30, had congregated here for the introductory Enterprise Start-up Information Session.

Yesterday I made a similar trip, walking from my boyfriend's flat in Canton towards my own place in Roath, and then on to the Cafe Nero to meet up with a business advisor from A4enterprise. He seemed nice and fairly chatty, admitting that usually he wouldn't be wearing a suit for the first meeting. He went over the programme and what would happen when, and then we agreed some deadlines for some business plans. I felt very good after this meeting, what with the sun shining away and my belly full of free hot chocolate and a feeling that I would succeed at becoming self-employed and self supporting through my idea to sell both art and art supplies via a website I would create.

Later that evening, the feeling disappeared completely. In its place lay a wriggling worm of doubt.

After finding numerous sellers of art supplies AND people on forums asking questions about selling art supplies, I started to feel like this wasn't my game. It seemed like such a good idea - sell art supplies because you can think like an artist who hates to spend money. But this is where the problem lies. If I were to really be the best art supply seller I could ever imagine, I would be giving the supplies to the artists for free, and giving them money for the work they produce! This is clearly not a realistically self-sustaining business plan.

The business would fail miserably.

After the information sessions today, I decided that I can't make this enterprise my plan for primary employment. This painty, creative, fun kind of art will be something I do, but it will be something I do on the side. I will have to find a different primary career for income.

I googled the definition of entrepreneur. They don't mind risk at all. I, on the other hand, can barely stand it.

So, I'm going to continue getting this entrepreneurship advice if only to set this art thing up on the side, but I will simultaneously be looking hard for an admin or office job of some kind. I've always considered office jobs as "not an option" because of the thought of being trapped in a box. I've realised now though, that I'm not really the claustrophobic type, especially when the choice is between hiding in the box or being devoured screaming and kicking by cold existence.

Follow this blog to follow the tale of how I eventually die.
Will it be warm, happy and loved in a snug bed at the age of 120 years?
Or penniless and deranged at the age of 23?*
I also occasionally use Twitter, so if you really like using Twitter, you can follow me at @CharGyse.


*(I hope not. I'm 23 now)

"The Chicken, or The Egg?"

This post is all about a series of birds I have been drawing.

It all began when I went to visit my boyfriend in his new flat, fifty minutes walk away. I found a copy of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" on the work desk. Then I read it.

I proceeded to become obsessed with the idea of creating comics to illustrate things. In fact, I'm surprised I'm not trying to illustrate this post. I think it's because this story is not very funny.

After reading through the following links, I started to play a fancy game of scribble game.

(Hint: replace the 2 in the second URL with 3, or 4, or 5, and so on, to get to the next post in the series)
http://www.tcj.com/layout-workbook/
http://www.tcj.com/layout-workbook-2/

You know the one. Someone draws a scribble, and the other one has to make a picture out of it.

After reading the posts about squaring the page (I'm currently at "Layout Workbook 8"), I started squaring the page; drawing squares and diagonals and circles, and then drawing a picture out of those initial lines.

The result has somehow ended up being a series of bird-like things.

The first one was spontaneous. I saw something that looked a bit like a beak, and so a beak it became.

The second one was just because I wanted to draw another bird.

The third one was because it was staring at me from the future. Once I saw it, I had to draw the frowning owl.

The fourth one was a request that went wrong and so was adapted into a different kind of bird than requested.

The fifth rectified the mistake made in the fourth.

The sixth is currently still in my head. It was suggested by someone after they were shown the turkey in the fourth. It's going to be a peacock.

Follow this blog if you ever want to see the peacock alive. in reality, or improve your chances of seeing the tweet announcing the existence of the bird on my brain by following @CharGyse on Twitter. By the way, the answer is the egg.

AlphaOmegaSin

The following is a post that had been left in Draft mode for a month. I had meant to come back to it and make it more post worthy, but then I completely forgot about it when my life got busier (more posts to follow). Something about reading it just now has made me decide to post it almost as it was when I left it, the only change being this little note. If you get bored of him, feel free to stop watching him. 

~
Lol:

 Less lol:


Turns out I find it less funny when I actually agree with the point he's trying to make (that sales aren't the Key Performance Indicator, or KPI, of whether a game is good from a player's perspective.) I was quite disappointed during the video, until that end bit where he changes from ranting nerd to absofuckingmentalutely nerd. Suddenly, I found something to laugh at again.

Check out the previous post here to find out why I found his first video funny (Hint: I'm laughing at him, not with him); or follow this blog to find out why it took so long for me to post the follow up.