My sister had her second child on Saturday 20th February, baby Nathan. He weighed in at exactly eight pounds, with blond hair and apparently, big hands and feet!

So I’m “Uncle Dan” for a fourth time! It doesn’t matter how many times that happens, it’s still just as amazing and exciting as the first.

The biggest change I’ve made recently is that I have stopped doing temporary work for Adecco, at least for now. I’m going to try and make a go of the freelance design and development thing. On that note, I recently finished my latest project, which I am pretty proud of. The site is E29 Incorporated, which is Adam Kinder’s new venture. Between us, we’ve got some pretty exciting things going on, but I have to keep those quiet for now.

I’ve also been loving the heat these past couple of weeks. Spending a lot of time away from the computer, in my garden and in the pool has been great, it’s one of the many reasons I love working for myself. Hopefully some day, it’ll be one of the many reasons other people love working for me, too.

That’s about all i’ve got, sorry. I guess I need to think of something new to cover on this site. In the meantime, if any of you want any custom work doing… Drop me a line.

The interview was pretty tough, it covered all sorts of topics you might not expect to be asked about, going right back to what sort of hobbies I had in school ( some 4-8 years ago ). Overall, I think I did pretty well and obviously the interviewer agreed, as she was happy to recommend me to carry on in the selection process.

So what’s next? I hear you ask.. Okay, so you’re not really asking, but i’m soooo telling you anyway. The next stage is the medical test, which is essentially a full medical work-up by a civilian doctor. He/She checks for literally everything that could make you unfit for service.

If I pass that, which is quite a big if, all that’s left to do is a final interview. It’s scary / exciting to think that it could be less than a month before I complete all of the entry stages, if all went well.

I’ve really not been doing a whole lot online lately, infact – i’ve not even really been online that much ( for me, that is ). Coupled with the fact that what I have been doing in the real world isn’t particularly post-worthy, i’m scraping the bottom of the content-barrel for this post. Apologies.

As some of you will know, I applied for the RAF about a month ago. Mostly because I want something to do that’ll keep my oh-so-random mind busy and challenged. Well, I have my aptitude ( selection ) test this thursday and i’m pretty nervous. It looks to be a pretty tough test, so i’ve been doing a lot of reading about it. I don’t feel “ready” for it, but I don’t think anyone ever feels ready for a test, especially when failing can set you back in something you want to do.

Aside from that, my life recently has mostly been about work. I’ve been doing work at a store called “Timberland” through a temp agency. It’s been fun, though more-so because of the people than the work itself. The job is actually very simple and laid back, to the point that I sometimes feel a little bit guilty to be getting paid for doing so little. I’ve never had that sort of luxury at any of my other retail jobs.

As a follow up to my ‘Everything…’ entry, I finally got some actual results from the doctors visits, and have been put on some crazy drug to just slow my heart rate down. So aside from the drugs completely killing my appetite, i’m back to normal now. Hurrah!

Apologies to anyone that actually checks this site, for the repeated dullness of entries. I’ll try and come up with something at least remotely interesting to write about, but you might have to bear with me, as that requires something remotely interesting to actually happen.

Edit: I posted all that, then realised that I forgot to mention the only interesting thing that happened last week. It was my birthday, I turned 20. Quite uneventful, but nice none the less.

Work,

As some of you might know, I decided to apply for the RAF in January, as something to do work-wise. Mostly because the web development “job” is more than a bit slow at the moment, and ForumStyled doesn’t really pay the bills. It’s a pretty huge commitment, as they’d require me to sign up for something like 8 years. Thinking eight years into the future at 19 years old, is no mean feat.

Anywho, I took a trip to leeds ( grudingly, scabby leeds ) and went to the careers office, where I spent about an hour or so filling out form after form, most of them much the same as the rest. They advised me to join a gym, to get prepared for the entry tests. Yeah, you read it right… Me, in a gym.

The gym,

So, after my oh-so-exciting trip to leeds, I started pondering where I was going to join up. I thought of the local “fitness first” places, but then looked at their prices, they want me to pay them about £50 a month to do some running, and some cycling? No thanks. Instead, I joined one just down the road from me, which I can cycle to ( more exercise! ).

A couple days later, I went for my first “session” with the “personal trainer”. Figuring I was slightly unfit, I was expecting to come home shattered, aching in places I didn’t even know existed. I’d barely been there 5 minutes, when I was on the first machine with a heart monitor on it… My heart was going insane. 185bpm after less than a minute light exercise? Something’s not right here…

The ol’ ticker,

After the crazy heartbeat session in the gym, I decided it was high time I went to the doctor to get some sort of check up. Much like me, he wasn’t so happy about the crazy speeds my heart was doing, and decided to put me through blood tests, ECG’s ( heart tracings ), lots of stethoscopes and all that jazz. Only to decide some two weeks later that he really doesn’t know what’s up.What’s the solution then? Nah, we won’t fix it… We’ll just use some drugs to slow it down. It’s now going somewhere between 60-100 at rest, but he’s hoping to slow it some more and steady it out a bit. Fun stuff. In the meantime, I’m not allowed to go to the gym.

The rest,

So aside from doctors appointments and varying other appointments ( opticians, etc. ), i’m not really doing a great deal at the moment. Anyone that knows me from the ‘online’ world will know that some of my free time projects include:

• IPS Beyond – I don’t really do a whole lot here, just some moderation, etc.
• Forum Styled – Formerly IBSkinned… I own and run this place, it sells skins. ( i’m such a salesman ).
• The “ineo” Project – This is me and Billy’s code-name for the Article Manager project. It’s also what powers the “Wiki” section of IPS Beyond.

A project a few less people will know about would be my new php application “kernel”. It’s a set of classes, libraries and such that i’m going to use to base most of my php projects off of. It’s coming along preeetty well.

The only other web stuff i’ve been doing of late is learning Python. It’s a whole different world from PHP, but it’s a very interesting language, and one I intend to learn more of.

Anywho, I’m going to stop boring you now and shut up.