Journeys of different types...

Well I blinked and the Earth has spun. It is that time of year again when time appears to be moving quicker than you can react. To think that it is November already is insane, I am not entirely sure where this year has gone to be honest. (Most of it disappeared into pits of stress caused either by Uni deadlines or living arrangements, but hey I got good marks at Uni and we now have a nice house share going on.) :)

The business cards I ordered from Moo.com after setting up an About.me page did not in fact turn up in time for Eurogamer, not that I really needed them anyway as the work I was doing there was not really for networking. Although in hindsight I really wish I had gone to some of the talks at this years Eurogamer, if nothing else to get my face noticed by the people conducting the talks as they were also at this years Game City. (Where I did take my business cards with me...) Yet Eurogamer went by in a blur of screens and people and the realisation that I do not have the right mentality for marketing, as time and time again it is a sector that keeps proving to me to be an area lacking in morals and fairness. But that is another debate...

Speaking of which there are many other things that I need to blog about at the moment, however right now I have a lot of work on and just need a break while I give my mind time to think. So I shall write about my time in London and then take it from there. I also need to re-think some of my online profiles, a separate Uni blog is useful, but ain't half confusing when it comes to updates from my end and probably the readers end as well. So for now I shall pass on my story of my brief Eurogamer Expo 2011 experience, that oddly enough wasn't really about the games...

DIY and Business Cards

Well it's now September...I have to admit that I am not sure how it got to this month. I feel like it has been a rather fuzzy year. (Might have something to with wishing most of it away due to the housemate from hell though...)

However things are looking up in regards to the house we now have a house full of people that all get on and it's turned into a nice happy house share. Not what I originally thought would happen when moving back here for Uni, but things rarely go to plan really. It has also meant that the other half has been having fun with some male company about and has been tackling one DIY project after another. (Doing a much better job of it than say my Dad has ever managed in his house - something about a hole in the wall and washing machines, I gather my soon-to-be step-mum was not happy with the results.)

At present however the men of the house are currently installing a new worktop in the upstairs kitchen, something that hasn't been done since the seventies by the looks of the décor. Meanwhile the girls are either out or getting ready to go out by the sounds of it. Not something I have done for a while as I have been trying to get on with work. Most of the time this has involved getting frustrated with the lack of software knowledge or annoyance as social media. (Depending on whether I am going Uni work or paid work.) Yet I suppose it is all a learning experience, a continual one at that due to the speed in which technology and the web are evolving. (Yet that is another post topic entirely really!)

I am however happy to have found this:

www.about.me/lizlansdown

It's like having a business card online and has solved the issue I was having with creating a paper business cards and the ever evolving Google Plus/Profile page. I have been agonising over creating a design for use on some Moo.com cards for the past couple of days. Of course I had some great ones in my head but was having that frustration with software packages in realising them! :) Also when I finally got to a design I liked I found that trying to decide what links went on it was tricky. Not only is there the issue of having many places on the net where there are profiles, blogs, updates etc there is also the problem of trying to fit most of that onto the card anyway. For a while now I have been using the Google Profile page as a sort of splash page and a way to collect together all those links on the net. However the introduction of Google+ has ironically changed that. There is no direct link to the About Me page now, well there is but it's not done through your profile name yet. That and the system is still in beta so things are changing a lot and I am not always sure what is visible to non-Google+ users.

So the solution came to me while just randomly searching for business card ideas, I remember seeing something about this service years ago. Probably when I was looking into promoting myself at college, now I come to think of it. So I found this site: about.me, which is just what I was looking for, a splash page that I can add links to everything else to. (Owned by AOL - always did wonder what happened to them.) Also while I was going through the set up with the intention of using Google URL Shortener to create a QR code for the About.me page to go to. However while setting up my profile I was given an offer to have some Moo.com cards using the About.me page for free (as long as I had an advert for Moo.com on the card.) This also produced a QR code that will go to the About.Me page as well as let me edit the other details that are on the back. 

Now I don't have my own design on there, and I also don't have a job title or description as such. As I don't really have either at the moment - job title is hard to sum up and as for the other I didn't want to put student on there. So I thought just keep it simple just so I had something to hand out to people if need be. Have also ordered the Recycled paper for the cards which makes them easy to write on if need be. Overall a bit of a bargain really and when I have a job title/description or for use in my end of year show I shall be heading over to Moo.com to buy some cards. :)

So I may not have had the most productive of days, but the evening has been spent learning a lot more, getting details for the gas boiler that will hopefully get installed before the first snowfall of the year! :)

Cleaning and Moving

It appears that a summer cannot go by without a vast amount of cleaning and the moving of furniture for me. Thankfully I have not moved house this time, although I came close to needing to thanks to the tension in the house due to the bad apple of a tenant. Now this time the cleaning and moving was all done in the same house, and it was needed to get rid of the smell and muck that the bad tenant left. (We are still trying to fathom how things got as dirty as they did - but when you hear about the long string of 'interesting' tenants this house has had you start to understand why each carpet clean produces black water.)

So today was spent sorting out the upstairs of the house, a lot of work had been done already, but there was a lot to do to finalise it all. (It's still not all done, but it's close!)

One of us was on carpet washing duty, the other on tidying and I was on lets move stuff and generally straighten. (Well that and sort out yet more bedding I swear it is breeding in this house there are a total of four double mattresses with only two double bed frames - don't even ask about the amount of pillows and duvets that have accumulated. Although I can't help but notice that the nice new pillows have gone missing since the last person moved out.)

This is also after a day of taking off very old polystyrene tiling from the hall way - or what was left of it. Which mainly meant the remains of some wood-chip vinyl painted wallpaper, which is a DIY or craftsmen nightmare, and then try and not damage the horsehair plaster underneath. All while on a ladder as this is on the celling...

Poor Bod, the only man in the house at present, was the one up the ladder the day before and today was the one using the carpet cleaner. He is going to have very sore arms by the end of it!

At least though things are getting better and from now on we can look forward to a cleaner and calmer house! (Hopefully one with hot water and heating before winter starts - the boiler packed in a couple of weeks ago and the landlord doesn't have the money to fix it right now.)