It was a bit of a shock when I then found out that it appears you can only make games using Visual C# (maybe you need plugins or something to use other languages, I don’t know) but I don’t really mind – I just ploughed on and figured I’ll learn C# as I go. Which turned out to be a good plan.

Because the tutorials on the XNA website are so slow it’s unreal. I don’t mean in terms of buffering, I mean they assume you’re completely incapable of navigating your own screen. They have to recap in painful detail exactly where a menu is (despite having a goddamned video. I have eyes, thank you very much. And they work too, funnily enough.) and all of the important parts of the last video. You know, that video that I just finished watching.

It’s fair enough aiming the tutorials at people with no C# experience, or even no programming experience. But we’re not retarded. Honestly. Plus, it’s all in American. They really kill our language. For example, what is #? It’s a hash, or a sharp symbol. Not a pound. That looks like £.

Anyway, that’ll do for an XNA-directed rant for the moment. In other news, I still have the same job as yesterday and the day before. This is promising, no? Today, I was updating the content of one website. And then tidying it all up with phpMyAdmin because the backend is useless and has no edit page. A minor annoyance, but it’s more than counterbalanced by the fact that Macs are pwettiful.

My job means that I’m not really getting all that much done: No Xbox 360, limited coding, no Mech, Stats or Pure Maths and no social contact. Fortunately, night was created for a reason: for people with jobs to not sleep because they’re doing things they would otherwise have done during the day.

Not to mention the fact that I’m enjoying both the work and the atmosphere. There’s a lot of banter that goes on, plus random pictures sent around on iChat (for example: this was pretty funny, if inappropriate) and I’m finding new places to eat in Huddersfield every day. We went to a noodle bar for lunch today.

None of us ate noodles. Anyways, back to the frustrating tutorials.

~ Godders.

So yeah, I started a job today. Full-time temporary, for four weeks. Making websites / updating websites / styling websites… you get the idea. It’s quite good, I like the environment muchly – mostly because everyone that I’m directly working with is really geeky. It’s fantastic.

While I’m on the topic of work: I’m using a Mac (The dual-core G5, a tad outdated but still nice) and the more I use OS X, the more I come to realise that I really, really want a Mac. I’m thinking either 18th birthday or leaving for University present, and probably a MacBook(or MacBook Pro). The only thing is, I detest the Mighty Mouse and their shitty small keyboard with half the useful buttons missing.

Also, while at work today, I’ve been listening to lots of Prog Metal and remembering just why I love Progressive Music. Opeth, Porcupine Tree and Ayreon were the bands I listened to today: Opeth’s soft album, Damnation, is absolutely brilliant – Windowpane is one of the best songs I’ve heard in ages. More of the same tomorrow, I reckon. Maybe some Dream Theater thrown in there too.

Had a fantastic sandwich for lunch, from a café called Breads (in Huddersfield) – Roast Vegetables and Feta Cheese, with Sweet Chilli Sauce. I’m not normally a fan of Feta, but the combination of the veg and the sweet chilli with the sour cheese was just fantastic. The pricetag, however, wasn’t quite so great – £4.73 for a sandwich and a bottle of coke is a bit excessive. Payday’s not going to be until next Wednesday either, so I think that’ll have to be my culinary indulgence for the week haha. Still, it was good.

Downloading Visual Studio is pissing me off – the download (which is 3.3GB) has died on me twice thus far, at 56% and 77% respectively. Am about to set it going again, cross your fingers for me! And I may or may not have played a little of a certain online game this evening. Still, I’m not playing it now so we can safely say that I’m not addicted again… yet.

Also, England won the second test of the Ashes thanks to some inspired bowling by one Freddie Flintoff. He can’t claim anything like all of the credit – it is, after all, a team game – but he certainly contributed his share to the victory. I played some cricket yesterday, too, but I don’t have that much time to play a lot of it.

That’ll do for the moment, and I doubt I’ll have anything interesting to say tomorrow unless someone spontaneously combusts at work or something.

~ Godders.