http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/index/ en daniel.govan@gmail.com Copyright 2009 2009-08-05T20:06:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/unexpectedly_massive_rambling_post/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/unexpectedly_massive_rambling_post/#When:20:06:00Z Oh oh oh so I found the list of games I'd played over the past few 3 or 4 months! Kinda slowed down/stopped now though as am deeply entrenched in Steven Erikson's Mazalan epic, currently on book 2 of 10(?) each weighing in at seven to nine hundred pages. Yes. I like my epics to be epic. So far it's like Jordon meets RR Martin, very convoluted and it pulls no punches with the mountain of (refreshingly original) Lore, but unusual protagonists and decent characterisation so far. High magic high drama. I like. So yeah, no time for computer games really. Summer in London has been kinda rubbish weather wise. Yes there's the heat and ok storms can be fun the first couple of times, but generally it's just hot and muggy, with occasionally breaks for cold-and-wet or hot-and-sunny, depending. For example Glastonbury was perfect (or so I hear, sadface) but Brighton Pride this Saturday was a complete washout. I'm a little sad we didn't persevere a little longer with it as by all accounts there was great fun to be had in spite of the weather, but we were late to the party, slightly hungover, completely sober and almost posse-less, so after getting soaked we went home, showered and cooked, like old people. Was really nice to have Luke over for a long weekend too, good times, fun wanderings, much snuggles, though it's ridiculous how much we bicker, given my previous opinion on couples who do that.. I think after the deceptive calm of the relationship with Si I seem to have gone to the other extreme: interesting but tiring. Plus he ate all my food. Damn him. Oh! And someone submitted a picture I took on Saturday to Look At The Fucking Hipster starring my *cough* beautiful *cough* boyfriend. He seems to be taking his new-found fame well. I finally registered and went to the doctors recently about my upper/mid back pains, which I used to attribute to my arthritis and just grin and bear but I'm no longer convinced; it seems more muscular. I'm hoping to get seen by a physiotherapist soon to see what, if anything, I can do about it. I really want to try and get in decent shape and I can't when flexing any part of my back gives instant cramp-like pains :-( The short term involves a crap-load of tests though. I've already had blood tests (many vials filled, erk) and a couple of x-rays taken, next I'm going to get some sort of endoscopy thing to find out how much nomming ibuprofen like it's candy over the years has screwed up my insides. Probably lots. SADFACE. I've been banned from taking my beloved ibuprofen tablets for now so I'm relying on deep heat and ibuprofen gel which is kinda awkward. Still though, it was nice to be able to walk in and out of hospital unaided. Work is pretty good right now, the all-company meetings sound slightly corny and are easily dismissed but I really get a feeling of where we are and where we are going as a company, and it all sounds good, even if I do take it with a pinch of salt. There's clear evidence of progress, from the report on the company Vision and Values that I helped put together and present to the London office FINALLY having a web presence at www.mrmworldwide.co.uk. I did the markup and styles for that as well which is a nice touch. At the last all-company meeting I learned that one of the websites I've been working a lot on recently (on of those projects that just won't go away) is to be on store PCs on the shop floor of every PC world in the country. Which is nice. On the other hand it's odd to have so many new faces in the tech department, what with the redundancies and redundancy-fears earlier in the year, as well as a couple of people leaving, part of that is down to us going from a .net house to .net and Java. Interesting times. I still walk to work every day which is awesome. Hopefully we'll stay at this address for another year to keep that lovely perk. Oh yeah, here's the list of games. The Last Remnant Didn't grab me in the first hour. Fail. Demigod Good, but it's just DotA Fallout 3 Not that awesome really. In any sandbox game like this I always get sidetracked making my fortune. I never care enough about the main plot. City Life Delux Confusing. Crusader Kings Damn confusing. And old-looking. Europa Universalis 3 AWESOME. With the Magna Mundi mod this game keeps me coming back. Europa Universalis: Rome Didn't catch on. Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 Silly but fun. Overlord Silly fun. Frustrating sequentiality given the lack of a map. Empire: Total War Kinda easy when I first played it. Shelved it waiting for patches. LotR: Battle for Middle Earth 2 Decent. LotR: Conquest Shite. Universe at War Good. The differences between the races kept it fresh in spite of the old-school UI Warhammer Dawn of War 2 Good, but I didn't get the big deal behind the multi-player which is clearly its main strength. With only 1 race single player quickly became dull. Civilisation IV I have trouble remembering which civilisation is which. The same flaw I find with every one is that the AI produces hundreds of units and I don't, because shuffling around hundreds of units is DULL. Chris Sawyer's Locomotion LOL Elven Legacy I can see some people liking this but hex wargames are a little oldschool for me. Sim City 4 Classic. I think Cities XL might steal it's crown though, god knows Sim Cities Societies damn well isn't. The Sims 3 After Sims 2 with all the add-ons Sims 3 very feature-poor. I'll have another look in a few years when the money-grabbing bastards have pumped out the obvious expansion packs that they already did in 1 and 2. Prototype AWESOME. Smashy smashy game with a decent plot. Didn't like the protagonist at all but I'm sure empathy would get in the way of all the smashy. Far Cry 2 Promising start, though my computer might die. CoD 4: Modern Warfare Really really good for the handful of hours it took. Overlord 2 Much better than Overlord. Made me realise I love having a palace/castle/den to upgrade and have ever since Civ 2 and BG 2 Stronghold Legends Baffling. Sacred 2 - Fallen Angel Awful. Diablo and Dungeon Siege have a shit child. Plants Vs Zombies Good arcadey fun. Desktop flash game basically. The Witcher - Enhanced Difficult to get into it a second time, I wish there was a way to skip the tutorial bit. Yes my attention span is that small. Left for Dead Shot some zombies. No big whup. I assume you have to play it online to care. 2009-08-05T20:06:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/rubbish_at_updates/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/rubbish_at_updates/#When:14:44:00Z Well I’ve played Prototype all the way through and had a brief, slightly disappointing dalliance with The Sims 3, so now I’m more or less waiting again, as far as games go. I can’t remember the long list of games I was going to post last time, but I think it included Spore, Fallout:3 and Empire:Total War, all of which were a bit meh. Call of Duty 4 was short but Sweet.  I keep coming back to Europa Universalis 3 with the Magna Mundi mod, it’s extraordinarily deep and I get massive geek thrills from uniting Italy 300 years early. In other news, I’ve been taking a royal fuckton of photos of gays and their drunken antics, such that I’ve damned myself to dozens of hours mucking around on photoshop and wrestling with the evil that is Facebook Uploader, and my friends refer to me as their paparazzi, and then complain when they find out who sweaty they get after dancing three hours straight in a basement that’s never heard of aircon. Part of me wants to take a break from that, another wants to shell out for a DSLR and do it properly. I’ve been failing badly when it comes to live music this year, I think the only stuff I’ve seen has been accidental, and looking through people’s Glastonbury photos I’m quite jeluz. I hope working Bestival works out but having not heard anything about it for months I’m not at all hopeful. I was going to try and go to Field Day, but it clashes with Brighton Pride. And Lovebox clashes with something else. Sigh. Started using twitter properly now. A little while back I finally knew enough people that are on it *and* (shock) USE IT to make it not a waste of time. Slightly mourning the death of flickr to facebook and the death of last.fm to spotify. Oh well. Keep on movin’. 2009-07-15T14:44:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/gamer_overload/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/gamer_overload/#When:09:40:00Z I’ve been playing a royal fuckload of pc games lately.  A combination of discovering I can buy and download games without leaving the house, having given up World of Warcraft a couple of months ago and generally maintaining a very short attention span. I’ll put up a list later of all the games I’ve played recently, but these are the ones I want to play. They’re not out yet. Sims 3 Diablo 3 Starcraft 2 Dragon Age Prototype Champions Online Knights of the Old Republic Online 2009-05-05T09:40:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/no_record/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/no_record/#When:10:20:00Z I was on a short hike a few miles north of San Francisco a few weeks ago. I had thought to bring a full bottle of water in my satchel but hadn’t thought to make sure the top had been securely attached. It came off, and my bag became a lovely little lake for my phone to swim around in. There was also a small moleskine notebook and one of my my hiking companions exclaimed “Oh no, your diary!”. I explained that it was empty. Empty diary. Sadface. My life is measured in google calendar and facebook fotos. 2009-04-02T10:20:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/testing_testing_1_2_3/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/testing_testing_1_2_3/#When:12:49:00Z I'm actually working on my blog today. Strange huh? It's all a bit simplistic compared to my original mockup but hey ho. I'll see what I can fix without ripping it all up and starting again. Hopefully. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Praesent iaculis mi sit amet nisl. Nunc non turpis. Pellentesque id est. In vestibulum, arcu in aliquam facilisis. Chekkitout it's a quote! No doubt a worthy and pointful one. I wonder how it's styled though! Morbi ut diam condimentum magna rutrum fringilla. Etiam laoreet. Nulla risus turpis, pellentesque sed, malesuada sed, ultricies et, diam Morbi fringilla risus vel diam sodales aliquam. Cras posuere auctor mi. Morbi massa mauris, tincidunt sed, facilisis at, sodales vitae, diam. Phasellus nec nibh nec nisi gravida malesuada. unordered unordered unordered In at leo. Morbi ut diam condimentum magna rutrum fringilla. Etiam laoreet. Nulla risus turpis, pellentesque sed, malesuada sed, ultricies et, diam. ordered 1 ordered 2 ordered 3 Donec in neque. Nulla fermentum diam quis magna. Title 1Definition 1. Title 2Definition 2. Title 3Definition 3. 2009-02-18T12:49:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/two_thousand_eight/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/two_thousand_eight/#When:15:44:00Z It's a dreadful way to start an entry but: I haven't really been blogging much. My life is documented in other ways now: everything notable that I do is in my google calender, and every weekend a new album (or two) of my recent exploits goes up on facebook. On the other hand, this blog thing might have more longevity so I should probably write a summery of 2008... January 2008 sucked to begin with, mostly a continuation of the emotional hangover from the breakup in November. I'd been doing cool stuff and gotten back into Warcraft to keep busy but the grief was still a constant companion and New Year's was a mediocre washout, by comparison to most other NYE, a failure. On the plus side, January was where I began to turn things around. It had been a particularly lardy Christmas and I decided I needed to lose wieght, so I started exercising and watching what I ate. In the name of getting out of the house I started a regular Orange Wednesday film night with a few friends. I re-opened comms with Ciaran and his posse that I'd been friends with at uni. I got talking to and met a couple of guys off OKCupid (not as sad as it sounds) and was out every Saturday with Giles and Will in a refusal to bow down to the depressingness of January. Also: West 5. Lol. February Was mostly more of the same, though a bit less partying and was kinda seeing Rich. Highlights: Eddie Izzard at a tiny venue, the new Popstarz venue. Lowlight: getting ill twice. March Involved five days in Paris visiting Mikey and a weekend revisiting Warwick for the "End of the Union" event. I also re-quit Warcraft and hit my weight target (70kg), which I've stayed around since then. Clubs and parties continued on Saturday nights, exploration of cinemas continued on Wednesday nights. April Saw Portishead and We Are Scientists, went to the The Future Of Webdesign conference, Laurie visited from SanFran, James turned 30. Also: snow! May Ken lost the election, I saw the Wombats and went to Edinburgh for a few days, Mikey returned from Paris. June Mmmm sun. Glastonbury. Stonking. Avenue Q. Start getting active on thingbox more. Drastically misrepresent myself to a posse of new friends by pulling two nights running. Also fun and frolics at Thorpe Park. July London Pride, Lewis, Week in Malaga, Mark, Javascript training. Meeting lots of fun new people. August Brighton Pride, Singing in the Rain, Anglesey, Manchester Pride, my first Pie and Mash. More of the same. September Shitty month, due to having to stay in Kev's (lovely) spare room in Watford and living out of a backpack. Randomly went to Bestival. Apart from a few lunches and dinners there were no midweek funtimes. On paper things were fine but it was very depressing, with too much time to myself to think. Perhaps as compensation I began going out on both Fridays and Saturdays as the norm, rather than one or the other, crashing on spare beds, futons and couches of more centrally-based friends. October Having finally moved into the place at Elephant and Castle things began to look up, though it was frustrating how long it took to get and assemble all the Ikea Furniture. Film Wednesdays had died a death but the heavy weekends continued. Had my first (and as yet still only) bona fide club pull. Amusing but meh. Annoyingly in spite of the facts of the matter I seemed to be getting a "reputation", though it was true I had tripled my sexual experience in less than a year, that really wasn't saying very much. November The two-nights-out weekends (including my birthday) culminated in a my taking advantage of time off work to go out four nights in a row. A record for me, and a bit of a milestone. I was clearly much better at this malarkey than I used to be. Excellent fun, good times, but tiring, and it changed my point of view on a couple of things. Firstly, I was kinda tired of night buses. Secondly, I decided I wanted a bit more "grins and snuggles" in my life. Given I had been pretty busy and social recently I had a few possibilities for dating, but that proved irrelevant as my first choice agreed to what was a lovely night of drinks and dancing. The rest of the month, and the first couple of weeks of December, was mostly spent being ill and/or playing Warcraft. The expansion had been released so I rejoined after a break of 9 months. Between that and Luke's pennilessness, I didn't do a whole lot, especially in comparison to the previous few months. As I discovered later everyone had had colds or flu of some description over this period though so I didn't actually miss anything. December Mid-month it was off to Edinburgh for the season's familial festivities. To be honest I had been really dreading it, but it turned out to be really good. Almost issue-free and pretty cheery; it was great to catch up with everyone. I had also been stressed about NYE, after the previous year's flop, and I had resigned myself to tagging along with some friends to a houseparty. Which proved awesome. Lots of people I knew and kinda-knew, was drinking and talking shit til 7 in the morning. My New Year's nights have always been good and I was very glad to find that 2007 -> 2008 was a glitch. 2009-02-12T15:44:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/dusk/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/dusk/#When:15:16:00Z The summer is over, winter slipping on. It’s getting chilly out so I can wear my winter coat again. Joy. In spite of this, after three years of faulty failings and a massive “repair” bill, the aircon at the office still only seems to work every other day. I have to wear a t-shirt and a jumper into work just in case. It’s not working today. Sweaty foetid grimness, without sunshine or a light breeze to make it tolerable. Sigh. I recently moved to elephant and castle, but I haven’t really settled in yet. Most of my stuff is still in boxes and disarray, and we still lack real internet. It’s 15 minutes walk to work though, which in London is just astonishing. Feels pretty good generally, hopefully I’ll be able to get everything sorted and get back into the swing of things. BBQ season is over, it’s time for the house parties. 2008-10-07T15:16:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/paying_for_flickr/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/paying_for_flickr/#When:13:37:00Z I just shelled out £25 for another two years of Flickr membership. I wasn’t going to bother initially, after all there’s always facebook, but after two years of membership I’ve become accustomed to the perks. The unlimited upload isn’t that useful as I process all my pics before I upload; I could easily get by on with the limited 100 megs a month. However with the free account you can only see the 200 most recent pictures, and even then only at low resolution, so upgrading was a no-brainer. It probably helps that one of my pictures of a recent Portishead gig was used in some random music review. Or so they tell me. It’s in Croatian so it could be anything really. Perhaps it’s a Yahoo! plot to stroke my ego and have me pay them money. Ideally I’d like to set up my website to display flickrd pictures on the front page, tucking the blog away somewhere else. At the moment not many people actually look at my favourite photos, never mind the larger versions, which is a shame. Here’s another pic that was used, this time for a travel site. Or something. 2008-04-26T13:37:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/absentee/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/absentee/#When:16:03:00Z Not sure I care enough about this blogging stuff at the moment. I think I need to rethink the whole idea. I used to blog primarily to avoid telling the same things to many people again and again. I hate repeating anecdotes. Six years later I find I’m much more inclined to enjoy telling the story, and much less concerned that some stories are forgotten and left untold. Besides which, few people actually check this site, fewer still that are not in touch through Facebook. Then it became a personal record of how I am and what I’m up to. Which is much more valuable in the long run. Facebook for all it’s transparency doesn’t have much of a history beyond the photos. I should be relating my changing opinions on life the universe and everything in this interesting period of transition. After all I’ve learned a scary amount in the past six months, where nothing much happened in the six before that. In retrospect it seems that my life was very dull, for all that it was content, living vicariously through my ex as I was. I find the fact I was so happy doing so rather disturbing now. Although it requires much more effort to achieve the same level of contentedness overall, I think I’m actually happier in myself, which is a real surprise to me. And having to put more into living isn’t necessarily a bad thing, after all you reap what you sow and all that. Though I’m not certain it’s entirely good either. Maybe it’s just a thing. I think I’ll shove this all into some archive at the back of the site, and use the front page to showcase flickr photos or something nice. That’s one thing that annoys me about flickr, the default display size for the photos is never enough to really see what’s going on… 2008-04-15T16:03:00+00:00 http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/delay/ http://www.dangovan.com/index.php/site/delay/#When:23:53:00Z Oh hai! I spent last weekend in Paris visiting Mikey. Here’s the pictures, with some commentary attached. So I’ve been slack with things on here, big shock there. I’ve been meaning to add linklog functionality to this site for ages, and then I was contemplating moving the blog part off to a sub-page and replacing it with an updated random quote generator of old… But none of that is very high priority at the moment to be honest. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I need to clear the decks a little I before getting back into the proverbial swing of things this week. Hmm. 2008-03-23T23:53:00+00:00