I recorded my first time on it and uploaded it to YouTube for all to see!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiaAvYzgeWA

The map isn’t brilliant, but its not bad for 25 minutes of work. If I was to do that in Hammer, then it would have taken perhaps a couple of hours to do! So there it is. It’s now out in the wild and people have been mapping like crazy fools over the past 2 days. As I write this, there have been 28,641 maps made.

If you haven’t jumped on the Portal band wagon, then I suggest you do it right now. For the next 12 hours Portal 2 will be £5.09, then will go back up to its usual price of £14.99. If you’[re real smart, then you will also spend an extra £3.40 and get both Portal 1 and 2 together!

If you’re one of those people who need to buy the game on a physical disk, then head on over to Amazon and buy it for £16.00 and free delivery if you live in the UK.

Of course, I had to record a video of him doing one! He’s completing the Greater Than, Less Than, or Equal To 1 – 5 worksheet in the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SbiHS_LSZA

While he was doing the worksheets, I also snapped a few photos!

This is the set up that I used to film him doing the worksheet!

It seems that this is an American website, but as maths is a universal language this presents no problems what so ever! It seems that tlsbooks.com also provide worksheets for other subjects as well as maths, which means I shall be coming back here in the future!

Some of the maths worksheets I have downloaded and printed out for Ryan;

• Addition Number Charts 2
• Multiplication Number Charts 1
• Number Patterns worksheet 1 & 2
• Missing Numbers 1-20
• Number Line
• Greater Than, Less Than, or Equal To 1 – 5
• Greater Than, Less Than, or Equal To 1 – 10

Everything adds up to around 20 pages of work for Ryan to complete. With some time over the next week or so, I believe he can complete each and every one of these. I will post his results when he has finished.

All audio has been removed as some of it contained personal conversations!

Also where I break at 0:49 I was explaining the difference between my breaks and the car I have learned in. Mine are very gradual, the other cars is very sharp.

The water had got every where! The kitchen and hall way contained the majority of the water luckily. I cleaned up the mess and proceeded to take apart the wahsing machine to see if I could fix the problem!

The first thing I looked at was the debris filter at the bottom of the washing machine. Opened it and water came gushing out. Mistake on my part, but what ever. This was not the cause. I then opened the top of the washing machine to see if I could do anything from the inside.

Once I opened it, it was very obvious!

The pipe that lead into the washing power drawer had completely come away from it. What an easy fix!

I attached it back to the draw intake and then turned it back on. The washing machine leaked every where! The leak came from the debris filter at the bottom this time. Turns out that I’m a tit and I hadn’t screwed it back on properly! I had to use some pliers to make it tight enough, but once it was all done, I tested the washing machine again and it worked perfectly!

Drying out the hall way carpet was a nightmare, but luckily we haven’t actually carpeted it properly yet, so it was all still in sections. We pulled it up and stuck them on the radiators over night ( a proper sweat fest that was! ) and they were dry by the morning. We re-laid them, and they are all fine now.

Road safety really is all about common sense!

I am really happy with the results I was getting!

On the 24th April, I finally got to officially prove that I can pass the test. I passed and I am now one step closer to driving my car that I won from JVC!

I was really happy that I passed my theory driving test!

All I need to do now is get some more driving lessons and pass my practical and I can drive my car by myself!

We met up in the Waterloo train station and got on the underground and headed to Brent Cross. 30 minutes later and we arrived. I phoned JVC to let them know we were there and the person who I had been dealing with, Mushtak, came and picked us up from the train station and took us to the JVC headquaters.

We arrived within 5 minutes and were greeted with several top level managers and I believe the JVC UK president, also present was a photographer to take my picture. There was a load of hand shaking going on along with everyone saying congratulations for winning the car. I got handed the keys and had my photo taken with the president of JVC UK. I got a quick tour around the car and then headed inside to have a cup of coffee with Jonny and Mushtak.

Mushtak and me.

Around 45 minutes later we left and headed to Jonny’s house and met up with his girlfriend, Helen,  who took us out for a meal. After which, we headed back to Jonny’s and grabbed his overnight bag and then got on the road back to mine. We finally arrived home at around 12.30. Not a good thing as I had to be up at 4am the next day for work!

Any way, long story short. I am  now an owner of a free Fiat 500 1.2 pop! Yay!

A quick photo of the car before we left London

We agreed to have him! He’s been with us for the past couple of weeks now and seems to be very happy with us. He got some quirks about him, some good, some bad. He does not like the postman what so ever, which a typical stereotype for a dog that you usually see in the movies, but what ever. We have sealed up the letter box and asked the postman to put the post in our cupboard, which they seem to be fine with.

He loves his walks that we take him on. He’s very particular about where he will poop as well. Always around the same spot, which we find very funny and he loves his cuddles. He’s very well-behaved and always does as he’s told. I’m glad we got him.

I set up a Facebook page for him not so long ago. If you want to follow Bob’s life journey, head on over to his Facebook page, it’s full of photos and little status updates about what he does and perhaps what he might be thinking. Some of it is very funny!

I didn’t think too much of it after entering. Quite frankly I completely forgot about it until I got a call on the 5th of March! I got a call to tell me that I had won the competition. What did I win? A brand new car! It’s definitely not the car I would have picked if I were buying it, but at the end of the day, it’s a brand new car that I have just won!

I am still waiting on JVC to announce the winners publicly, but I have been officially told that the car is definitely mine!

It's a girl car, I know, but at the end of the day, we now have a FREE car! Yay!

I managed to get the insurance from Admiral, who were the cheapest by far. It’s costing me £1019.77 for 12 months at £85 per month, which is pretty good, so I’m told. It would have been £789.31 if I had paid it in one lump sum, which unfortunately, I am unable to afford to do so before I get the car.

I should be going to London next week to pick the car up and drive it home. Unfortunately, as I am a learner, I still need to have someone with me that has a full valid UK licence for at least 3 years who is over the age of 21. If all goes to plan, then I will be able to drive it all the way home, avoiding the motorways, which should be a lovely 2 hour drive!

For those out there that know me, this is going to be a “what the fuck moment” for them. For those who don’t know me, I’ll explain; My last job was in 2004!

How come it’s been so long since I had a job? Well, my last job didn’t end well because of a breach in a verbal contract between me and the proprietor. We agreed that I would get £100 of my wages weekly, and the rest on “pay-day”. They broke this agreement, and an argument ensued. Needless to say, they fired me!

As new employers tend to speak to old ones before they hire someone, my guess is that some things “were said” that prevented me from getting any where in life employment wise for the next year or so.

March 14th 2005, I got some amazing news, I was going to be a father. This was awesome news for me, as Katie and myself had been trying for a baby for several months with no luck. After this amazing news, I was determined to find a job, but sadly nothing appeared on the radar until the local job centre offered to help me get some training in late 2005 to early 2006.

They sent me off on a course in Southampton where I would gain a pitiful ECDL qualification, that had little to no merit in the real working world. What I did gain from the course was some real world working experience at the Winchester College in their IT department, sadly this ended quite quickly as I was in the middle of trying to quit smoking and I had an allergic reaction to Zyban, sadly Winchester College pulled the plug on this endeavor as I had too much time off as I was in hospital.

I did how ever get some experience from the company who I was doing the course with. They asked if I wanted to help them set up their network in the offices they had just acquired. I promptly said yes and helped out.

It had been more than 5 years since my last job. During which, I sunk into depression, which got real bad at times, which only made my situation worse. I developed agoraphobia and was with drawn from society. Although, it has taken me a very long time to get out of the rut I was in, I am now much better, much more active and employed! Massive turn around in my life!

I work for a company based in Portsmouth. From what I understand they work with The Southern Co-operative providing cleaners to clean their stores. Luckily they had an opening in the store just around the corner from where I live. I snapped up the opportunity right away. I enjoy my job, it’s great fun and I get to work up a good old sweat running up and down the stairs. It’s essentially like being paid to work out! I like that!

I finally got my work t-shirt. It only took them a month! lol

I have included some screen shots from the latest rendering of the map below. Any and all feedback is welcomed.

At a quick glance they seem to have done pretty well with integrating chat, game purchasing, groups, news and profiles into the application. There are still a few things not working, which clearly say are still a work in progress. This is not a review, nor is it to be considered one. This is simply a post showing some screen shots of the app that is in development.

Below are screen shots of each of the major sections with a little explanation of each. Click the images for a larger view!

The Profile

This is the main profile page. Click the image for a larger view

Edit your profile!

Edit your privacy settings

Your screenshots that you have taken of your games. This section is still under construction

The videos you have uploaded to youtube and have accociated with games on your steam community page. This section is still under construction

Steam Chat

This is steam chat. It functions the same way as it does on the pc.

Its easy to copy text from your chat window. Simply press down and hold over some text and it will copy it to the clipboard.

This is a bug. If you are chatting and have the virtual keyboard up on screen and press the menu button, it stays up and slides the menu open. You would expect the keyboard to have disappeared!

Friends List

This is the blotter Steam have implimented on the community page, so you know what your friends are up to !

This is the list of all of your friends. Both online and offline!

Groups

The list of Steam groups you have joined! LOL there is an image here, wordpress is crap at setting thumbnails! Click it to view what it looks like properly!

The group page is pretty much as it appears on the website. There are some missing features such as the ability to join the chat room.

It's very easy to join and leave groups! Annoyingly, the join and leave button is half way down the page after the "page introduction"

Steam News

A list of the official steam news sections

The news that valve syndicate through the steam website

The news page for the announcements section.

Steam Store Page

The steam games store page is just as extensive as it is on the website. It shows you all the different packages available, the metascore and relivant information about hardware requirements.

The steam store is the same as it is on the website, so its nice and easy to find the latest and most popular games.

Some games that were previously available on the steam store but are no longer produce a message telling you that the game is unavailable.

The shopping cart functions just the same as it does on the website. i haven't gone through and bought anything yet, but I can imaging the payment process is the same.

Searching for games is just as easy as it is on the main website. Its a live search, so if your on a slow connction expect it to take a while to get results back as it searches as you type, which means it performs a search for each character entered, which is bad for people using their mobile data plans.

Settins and Menus

A simple settings panel, but allows you to customise the ringtone used to alert you to new messages or what have you and has a place for you to input your date of birth so making age restricted games easier to view.

The menu bar showing each section is very easy to navigate. its very much like Facebooks own menu system in this respect, as you can see in the picture below.

I have recently had a discussion on Facebook about girls toys and how they promote being 3 things; a mother, a house wife or a whore. Every time this “issue” gets mentioned, almost everyone literally jumps at the chance to call me a dick and tell me that I am wrong, but lets take a few minutes to have a look.

Lets look at the definition of a whore. To quote dictionary.com “a woman who engages in promiscuous sexual intercourse, usually for money; prostitute; harlot; strumpet”. Now we know the definition of a whore, lets think about what the modern day whore might wear. At a rough guess she would wear a very short skirt and a revealing top. If you really need a visual helper check the photo below.

Photo from http://www.inquisitr.com/25563/man-calls-a-prostitute-his-own-daughter-shows-up-dbp/

We have established above the definition of a whore and what a whore dresses like. If we now apply what we have learnt to a Mattel product, Bling Barbie, would you consider her to be promoting “whorishness” (not that I think that’s a real word, but lets pretend for now that it is!)? I certainly would, and I would deny my daughter, Chloe, any access to such a product, simply because of that reason.

Image from - http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B000A7S596/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_all

Lets look at another word; Housewife. Again to quote dictionary.com “a woman, typically a married woman, who keeps house, usually without having paid employment”. If we break apart the quote and explain it some more it will easier to understand the meaning of “housewife”.

“A married woman, who keeps house.” If you look at that sentence alone, it literally tells us that, first it must be a woman and secondly they tidy up, they clean up, they make the house nice and presentable for the rest of the family, be it a husband and or kids.

“Usually with out having paid employment.” This tells us that it is the general norm for a “housewife” to be at home, keeping the house, without any financial contribution to the household. O.K. fair enough, if the husband doesn’t mind it, then why not? Well there’s the problem, why would a woman want to give up their life and dedicate it to cleaning or making their house pleasant? Where is the satisfaction in that? Going out and getting a job is a much more satisfying thing to be doing. It also makes you a productive member of society who actually contributes towards it!

“So?”, I hear you ask, “What’s that got to do with toys?”. Again, take a look at my first paragraph. Girls are inundated with toys that represent cooking, cleaning and the like.

My original point is that girls toys are all about promoting those 3 things; mothering, a house wife or a whore. I’m not going to bother to go into “mothering” as dolls and mechanical babies really infuriate me and by this point you are probably thinking that I have been talking for quite a long time! Well you’re right.

I am sick and tired of living a society where girls toys promote being a mother, a housewife or a whore. Why isn’t there a telescope with a picture of a girl looking through it? Why isn’t there an RC car with a girl playing it? Why is the astronaut costume got a boy in it? Why cant there be a photo of a girl shooting a boy with a Nerf gun in the advertisement? I want to inspire my daughter to be more than a mother, more than a housewife and more than a whore. Yes it’s her life and ultimately its up to her what she does when she leaves this home, but for now, I will not be letting her have any toys that reinforce an outdated concept about women, how they should act or what they should look like.

People think that toys do not influence our decisions later in life. There are countless stories in the papers, on tv and on the internet about people being inspired as children by their toys and later in life becoming a huge success and fair play to them too. This is the reason why I am careful with what toys I let my children play with. Toys are designed to stimulate and teach the child, to help them prepare to be accepted into society as they get older. To make a brighter and better society, we need to think about how our children are brought up and with with influences in their life.

If you think that I am wrong and that these toys that I have mentioned do not in any way promote what I have suggested, then please enlighten me in the comments  below.

A friend of mine posted a status update with something rather interesting. According to the status, you were able to find out the name of your phones sim card by typing in a simple “code” to the comments box of any type of post. All you had to do is type in the following;

@[123:0]

Replace the numbers “123″ with the last three numbers of your telephone number. I tested it out and indeed it work. It changed @[854:0] into Ashley Nathanson. Kind of odd, but what ever. I then started to wonder if it would work with other numbers. It did. It worked with almost any number abover 110. It even worked with 4 digit numbers and so on.

Im not sure if this is a bug, or if Facebook knows about this, but I thought I would share it with you. Check out the video below to see me doing it on one of my photo comment boxes.

Update

Turns out this is not really a bug, but it is basically how Facebook tag people in posts and it is related to your facebook ID. Before Facebook introduced the profile username, you were assigned profile ID numbers, which are still used if you look hard enough in the Facebook code. For example If you take the number 456 and put it into the string as @[456:0] it will give you the name Becky Wald. Now, if you go to https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=456 you will see Becky Wald’s profile page. Similarly, if you use the number 700197659 in the string, @[700197659:0], it will produce my name, David Miller. Also as above, if you go to https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=700197659 it will take you to my profile.

This concludes the mystery of what this is all about!.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xIDz4aYoUA