The Ghost That Wasn't

I survived.

Indeed, the first Wicid residential has been completed.

As I can tell by your good looks and your beautiful eyes that you read anything that compliments you. So, allow me to elaborate.

It was Friday. It was sunny, and I missed university because I gave in the assignment a day earlier than needed. You did not need to know that. Moving on.

We had our mission, to do some stuff for Wicid. Allocated time? A weekend (that's two days, fact fans). Where? Sealyham Adventure Centre in Pembrokeshire.

Somehow, we actually got to the destination roughly on time. And yes, I am looking at you, Clic's most recent residential up in Anglesey. Argh is indeed the word for the moment.

We arrived, some time not long after the sun went to visit the other side of the world, outside a Georgian house. It was a rather nice house, to be fair, and the surrounding area was rather dark, as it was night. I'm babbling. Forgive me.

After devouring the food that was in front of us, we had the whole "get to know each other" thing, this time we had to say two things that we liked about ourselves. Lovely. Luckily, all I had to say was that I was the sub-editor of Wicid. Talk about easy runnings...

But yeah, we went on a ghost walk thing in the nearby woods, which wasn't that scary. It was a bit unnerving, but the fact was we were in near pitch darkness and I'm not a fan of the dark (not phobia level, I just prefer light than darkness). Luckily, I had a torch on my phone, so I just stood by Craig (Wicid's editor when Cat's away) so he can find his way as he was filming. Well, I'm guessing he didn't want to damage his camera, so y'know, I thought I'd be nice. Ha.

After that, t'was plain sailing. The only other interesting thing after that was a story of Goldilocks told in the style of Stacey Solomon by Ricky Paveltish. Pretty epic story, to be fair.

Next morning, we had stroganoff for breakfast. We didn't, but even if we did I wouldn't have recognised it or had it. I had a roll from my bag. Hardcore isn't even the word for me. Neither is bird. Anyway.

The workshops began. As Craig went out to pick up some spray paints or some weed, we're not entirely sure what, the Detached youth workers began the first workshop, an OCN in creative writing.

Luckily, one of them came up to me saying to me and four other, older members of Wicid "you can sit this out, we actually want you to go around and helping the others". Result.

I went around, not helping anyone. Not by choice, but by the fact that I had no idea about creative writing. Granted, nearly everyone I know says that I can do creative writing because of my Dear World articles, but I can't see them as creative. They are just the stuff I think about and write them down. Ooh, I'm babbling, forgive me.

Later on that day, Crag returned with some spray paints, and with a rather spaced out look about him. The rather large group was split into two groups. One continued with the creative writing workshop, while Craig led the music workshop.

It was a songwriting workshop. He asked me to help out, I was rather rubbish with my attempts to help. I did, on the other hand, think up a riff for a song now. That is all.

So, in all the Clic residentials, there were activities, with the one up in Anglesey being something involving circus stunts and that. This time, we had a choice between high ropes, coast steering and archery. And since I have a thing about both water and heights, it was obvious for me to go to archery.

The walk was long, but to be fair the scenery was epic. When we arrived, and after the instructor told us how to do archery, we had some practice shots. Unfortunately, I didn't kill anyone. Ah well.

I'll be honest, I've always liked the idea of archery. I've always wanted to try it, yet I have failed to try. I didn't think I was going to be good at it, I just thought I'd try.

I stood up to the plate (well, the bow and a piece of wood, but y'know what I mean), picked up the bow, placed the arrow in place, aimed and fired. I hit the board, and not a bad shot with that. I continued, with the next three arrows going close to the first one. None in the bullseye, but no total misses either. Lovely.

After two or three rounds, I stood up once more to the piece of wood. I then asked the instructor something. Can I try it left handed? He allowed me to do so.

And, to the surprise of both of us, I was at near the same level I was doing it right handed. It seems as though I am ambidextrous in archery. I bet you'd give your right hand to say that.

After a few more rounds of hitting balloons with arrows and crisps, we headed back, had nomage and began the next workshop. I still stayed with the music lot, though I was worse than I was in the beginning. I'm rather crap when I need to help people on a subject that I'm not good at. Ah well.

After that went on for a bit longer, dinner was served. For them, it meant lasagna and other foods. For me, it meant a few welshcakes and a ham baguette. Don't ask me why.

The Saturday night ended with a few people watching the Wales game, though I, along with a few other people, went to some room where they had some games and that. After that was some film about a social networking website or something, I don't know. After that, bed. Nice.

It was a rather disappointing residential overall. The place was supposed to be haunted, we were supposed to have heard coughing in the night and feeling like we were pushed down in our beds. It didn't happen. Nobody went missing, which I thought would have happened. Ah well.

It did end on a high. I went with Craig on the way home. We stopped somewhere near Neath to have some food. He then thought it would be funny to tell the girl who served us that "Trevor sent us", referring to the car shop that was near. He insisted that he heard on the radio that if we said that Trevor sent us to McDonald's, they'd give us a free Big Mac. Worth a try, but she was having none of it. Ah well.

Apparently, there's going to be more Wicid residentials. Ah well, maybe they can pick a place that has internet access, eh? Ah well.

- With karate I'll kick your FIN.

Pixel You In

Oh, how do I think of these blog names...

Anyway, this blog is just to ask you something.

What do you think of this?


DC1S01 Sound Sync Animation from Gareth Aled John on Vimeo.

This is a rubbish version of the final project for university. I was supposed to do a 60-90 second animation on either sound syncing (matching imagery to sound) or moving picture (having an image and animating it), using Adobe's After Effects to create the animation.. As you can tell, I went for the sound syncing option.

I had no idea what to do. Then, I though fuck it, I'll do it about Wicid. So, this is my university assignment about advertising Wicid. Ha.

For some cocking reason, it didn't upload in widescreen format. It turned it into 4:3 ratio. No idea why. I would up it onto YouTube, but it'll be taken down due to it having a song by Gob called Face The Ashes. Grr to them, I say.

Anyway, what do you think of it? Any good? I know that the text's a bit odd and slightly shit, I honestly has no idea what to write for it.

In other news, I'm off to Sealyham tomorrow for a residential with Wicid. Should be decent. I'll write something about it when I get back.

Ah, a nice short update here. Lovely.

- You got it. A FIN FIN FIN FIN.

Welsh Invasion

I'm rather shocked, if I'm completely honest with you.

Because I'm a rather sad child, I recently looked at the stats of all my blogs. This blog seems to get (on average) about three views a day, which isn't bad at all in my eyes. My other blogs, which are an extension of my Dear World articles on Wicid and on Clic, aren't doing as well. But then again, they are doing well on both sites (this blog and Wicid/Clic).

As I looked upon the stats of all my blogs, I turned my attention to the Welsh Dear World blog, named Annwyl Fyd, and its statistics. And I turned my attention to the referral links.

And what did I see?

A referral from Hedyn?

What's this? I thought to myself.

I clicked on the link, and this was the result.

If you don't go on it, it gives a small introduction (with links) to my Annwyl Fyd website. I was gobsmacked. Why is it up there?

I dug further, and Hedyn seems to be some sort of portal for blogs in the medium of Welsh.

That is a win in my book.

I was intrigued by this. So, like the sad child that I am, I searched Annwyl Fyd into Google. Unexpectedly, my articles were the first ones in the search. Then, as I entered the third or so page of the search results, I stumbled upon another Welsh-based blog, Blogiadur. This has a collection of all Welsh blogs. To me, the win level has increased tenfold for me.

I don't know if this means that the Dear World articles are any good. Maybe they just add any Welsh blog up to those sites. But yeah, it's still an achievement. Fuck yeah, indeed.

Talking about Wicid and Clic, there shall be a Wicid residential soon. I shall let you know how that goes.

Oh, and in university news, I've passed my first Radio Production assignment with fifty five percent. That means that I'm still on track of passing every assignment first time. Yes, I know I failed my second Video Production assignment, but even then only by five percent.

I shall leave you now. Mwahahaha.

- Find me somebody to FIN