Thinking Time

Today, I'm working from home.

About an hour ago, I saw something rather innocent. Nothing major, just something that is normal.

But for some fucking reason, my mind's decided to make it into the massive bullshit arena. I've seen something that is usually normal, but I've connected so many things to it, I've made it into something that's made me feel paranoid and, for some fucking reason, like I've been punched in the stomach.

And to top it off, I just had a letter from Student Finance, saying I'm only eligible for the bare minimum.

Fuck.

Not only that, the way they've spaced the payments out means that I wouldn't have virtually any money to use if need be. For this term, I'm only getting over £400. I'm lucky in the fact that I only pay something like £350 for housing and that, but by fuck I'd just have £50 or so for the entire term.

God damn and custard creams, it's lucky that I don't have a social life and horde all the money that I've ever had until I blow my budget in one purchase. Fuck, I'm a dickhead.

So, for the past hour or so, I've done no work. All I've done is stare at my keyboard or aimlessly looking between social networking sites, thinking about pointless shit, making matters in my head worse.

And you know what the worst thing is? I really wish I could stop. I wish that I could restrict the thoughts that go through my mind. I keep telling myself stop it, you're being a twat, but alas poor reader, my brain decides the best call of action is to persist, which makes my day even worse.

In other news, I made myself look like an even bigger bastard of boredom on the weekend, as I was asked to photograph some bands for this year's Wicid Battle Of The Bands final. Unfortunately, out of the 200+ photos that I took, only eight or so where ones I thought were adequate at the least.

I used my old camera for this, my Canon 600D. I have a 5D Mk III now too, but didn't use that because I didn't feel I was used to it yet to use it, if that makes sense.

So yeah, that's a thing.

There's nothing else to add.

So, I shall end it here. I should be going back to work. Hopefully I will and not think about shit.

- Fuck it all, fuck this FIN.

Define It

Do you ever think who and what the fuck am I??

I do.

It mainly occurs when I read other people's biographies on social media sites. I just saw one who described them as loving, caring, intuitive person and the like.

My main thought on that, without sounding like I'm being a total arse, is what makes you think you're the things you think you are?

I mean, I'd like to think I'm somewhat a decent person, someone who has a sense of humour and can be relied on. But it's not really up to me to describe myself. It's up to the people who are (un)fortunate to meet me.

For all I know, people may consider me an absolute twat who's only plus side is the lack of socialising I do. I don't really know what people think of me, but that's their right. And let's be honest here, they are a better judge of me than I am, considering I only see my own perspective while others see everyone else's.

Does that make sense? Does anyone read this blog? Not sure if any of those questions will ever get answered.

But the main one is when it comes to what I do. I've heard/seen people call themselves all sorts, just because either that's the thing they do most or they just can.

I mean, I can call myself a professional photographer, a director, cameraman, editor, translator, designer, compositor and writer. But I don't. Why? Well, just because I do those things (and by directing, I just tell people where to sit/stand so they are in shot and the like, nothing arty or anything like that) doesn't make me them.

You know that saying I live, therefore I am? It's either that or something like that, I don't know.

Back to the point; I'm not completely sure that's true.

Just because you live, doesn't necessarily mean that you're alive. Probably. This is all coming from someone who's only slept outside his home country for eight days, so I'm not the most knowledgable when it comes to life lessons.

Anyway, I think it's true. Just because I played a few games of cricket for Pontypridd, doesn't mean I'm a retired cricket player with a decent bowling average and a terrible batting average. It just makes me someone who used to play cricket.

And yes, for those who think that's a boring sport, I actually like playing cricket. Bowling can be both a stress reliever and a good way to make you think. Don't judge me, ya?

It's just that I see loads of people defining themselves as something just because they have an interest in it, when in all honestly they are either not good at it, or not as serious as they say they are.

That's why I hate it when someone asks me to describe myself to people. Unfortunately, where I work, we get a few young people in for work experience. And I have to say what I do. And I just repeat the same thing - I help out with translation, media and sometimes with moderating written content.

I have a problem defining myself, it seems.

There's only two things that I know I am, and that is a student and a male.

And that's the major one for me. I'm male, and I'm almost twenty one years old, a combination that usually results in someone describing themselves as a man.

But not me. Why? Mainly because I don't think I've done anything worthy of the title.

And no, I don't mean releasing my seed within a woman's baby chamber.

There's so many ways to define what a man is. And I don't think I'm any of it. Yet.

Maybe that'll change in decades to come. Maybe I'll be on my death bed, looking back at my past, and thinking that my younger self was just being an utter arse. So, nothing new there, then.

So, that was a blog post worth forgetting.

- I spent a few minutes trying to think of a way to end this by adding FIN into it, but I couldn't think of anything better than what I've just written. So yeah... FIN.

Ideas Inc

Two blog posts in a day? Man, shit must have really hit the fan.

Well, not really, I'm just saying stuff for the sake of it.

For the past like, month or so, I've wanted to do so many things and I don't know why. So this is just a chronicle of my failures, even though most of them will never happen. How lucky are you?

Number one, even though I am in no way a photographer, I would absolutely love to go to Cardiff Bay at three in the morning and just take photos of things, especially when the sun comes up.

I have no idea why, but for a while now it's something that I want to do. To cover an area that I have no real knowledge of and photograph it in a time where the majority of the people in Wales are asleep. It would be brilliant. But there are problems.

Well for starters, even though there'd hardly be anyone there, I'd still feel awkward taking photos in public. Secondly, the chances of someone else coming with me would be slim, meaning that I'd be on my own, meaning that I'd feel even more uncomfortable. So, until I somehow gain confidence or until someone else thinks shit, that sounds like something I want to do too, count me in, then it shall forever be a dream.

And I know, Cardiff Bay isn't the best place in the world, I just thought that would be a good starting point.

The second one is also linked to photography. And also sounds like I'm a sad deluded child.

I have this image in my head. It's of a girl sitting down in a park or something similar with the sun behind her. She's looking down, and she's smiling. Not one of those half arsed smiles that people give when you point a camera at them and tell them to smile, but a genuine smile. One of the images is of her just about to smile (you know what I mean, right? As in that moment before you fully smile?...) and then another shot of her fully smiling, again not after I say cheese.

And now I have probably lost fifty man points. Then again, I wasn't doing well in the manly stakes anyway.

I can't get this image out of my head and, considering my Photoshopping skills aren't that good, I won't be able to just do a cut and shut job to give you as an example. But again, this brings a few problems, mainly considering that the subject is a girl.

And by that, I mean that I feel awkward asking a girl if I can take photos of her. Even if I state what I have in mind and I'm not trying to get both of us into the porn industry, it still sounds slightly odd.

Not only that, and this is probably going to be construed as sexist, but I find it even awkward still if it was male. But that said, I feel rather awkward when I'm editing a picture or a video of a male person. I just feel much at east working with imagery that has a female subject. And now that's going to be read as if I'm a pervert.

I can't explain it. It's not that I'm secretly gay and I always feel attracted to any male people in the imagery that I edit, because that's not true. Neither is it true that I want to bang any girls that are in a certain piece of footage. There's some unexplainable reason that I find it at least ten times easier to edit an image that has a female in than a male. If that does indeed make me sexist towards my own gender, then so be it.

The third idea (part one) is totally down to my inexperience with 3D software.

I have an idea for a series. A series which uses 3D throughout the thing. For some reason, I've codenamed it Fallen.

Basically, if you've watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and most importantly the last half of it, you might have an idea of what I'm thinking of doing.

But I don't mean that I want to do a rip off of Advent Children. I want to do something similar, yes, but not rip off. I don't want to create a character that is similar to Cloud, Tifa, Sephiroth and co and have them do the same moved they did in that film. Neither do I want to rip off Devil May Cry 3, but just use them as influences to create this impossible series.

I have no idea what the focus of Fallen would be. I don't know what the story is, or the characters or the structure of the series. All I know is that I have this idea, and every day I keep thinking of different scenes, and after I think of them, I just imagine how bollock hard they'd be to pull off. Shit the bed.

Part two, which I'm linking with my Fallen idea, is that I want to do an animation relating to bullying, using this song by My Morning Jacket as the background music. The part I want to use for the bullying animation is from about 4:30 onwards.



The idea I had for this is someone being bullied is contemplating committing suicide. They are up on a tall building (so tall that the camera can't even see the ground, if that makes sense). They then turn around to look at the people behind them, and sees ghosts of people who has bullied them, and begin to fall backwards (the moment the guitar does the dive bomb thing).

Then after a few seconds of falling (and other shit), there's a hand coming from the heavens. The person thinks it's the hand of God, and reaches out to hold it. There's a slow motion sequence where they are about touch, which cuts back to the building top. It was a human hand, grabbing the person who was about to fall, stopping the inevitable death. It ends with the two hugging each other, crying. Others appear on the rooftop, standing there, staring at the person who was about to die.

Yes, it makes no sense theoretically. When I came up with it, I had a slogan saying Bullying: It's Not Worth Dying For at the end of it. It will not work, mind, mainly because the idea is utter shit, but also because again my skills with 3D are terrible. Maybe one day, but in a decades time, not in the short term.

The forth one is similar. Kind of. I again have an image in my head. This time, it's of a wedding dress.

No, there's nobody special in that dress, so nobody ask me who I was thinking of in a wedding dress. The person doesn't matter.

What matters is that I thought of an idea for a wedding dress. The problem? I can't draw to save my life. The only conceivable way that I could illustrate what the dress would look like is if I either go an create it in real life or using a 3D program. And both of those will fail because I have no idea when it comes to fashion design and am incompetent in 3D software too.

The only thing I can say is that Final Fantasy has indeed influenced it. And no, I don't mean that it's short and shows off the girls booby area like some of the designs (especially Tifa and Rikku in X-2). If you're an FF nut, try and think of a hybrid of Yuna's wedding dress, Lightning's costume in XIII and Haley's wedding dress in that episode of American Dad. You know the one, that one where she's a sleeping agent and Stan activates her by saying I'm getting tired of this orgasm? Yeah, not sure if anyone can actually imagine a hybrid of that style.

I honestly don't know why this idea is in my head. I've never really had an interest in fashion design, and yet here I am, laying in my bed, imagining someone wearing my idea as a wedding dress. I don't know.

Fifthly, I want to actually do a CLICvlog of my own.

On what? Well, I'd like to do a tutorial one, maybe one about how to set up a green screen or how to colour correct images. The problem? You've probably guessed it, it's my confidence.

I feel much better when I'm behind the camera. I have no qualms when it comes to me not being the centre of attention. But for some reason, I have a sudden urge to just share my (lack of) knowledge with others and actually know how it feels to be in front of the camera. But yeah, I feel awkward in front of any lens.

Even if it's a camera on a phone, I feel awkward when someone takes a photo or a film of me, so filming and editing a CLICvlog which I'm in would be melon-twistingly awkward.

I don't think there are any other potential fails in my head that I'd like to share. There is one more, but it's way too personal to share here.

Bye then.

- Touch me, I'm going to FIN.