The Whitehawk

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, then one of the things you should have heard about was my decision to move to the United Kingdom, in order to pursue a career in web design. I thought that I would only have to move once, from home to the airport, but it appears that I’d have to move once more than expected.

Things aren’t going too well between me and my father, perhaps because we spend too much of our time together, perhaps because of the age gap between us. Regardless of the reasons, things between us were deteriorating quickly, so rather than let them get too far, I decided to move out, hoping that the change would do us both good.

Ironically, the blog that made me kick off my “career” as a blogger was recently sold for the second time to Splashpress Media and they decided that rather than keeping the editors, they’d use their own. So I’m out of a blogging job right now, but hopefully not for long.

David Peralty has been great with me, and instantly tried to hook me up with some of his contacts looking for quality editors for their websites. Whereas most would simply turn their back to me and wish me well, he went the extra mile. So when you read this David, I just want you to know that I really appreciate all of your help and care, and I’m sorry if I haven’t sound resoundingly happy these past few days.

In a way, I’ve been down for these last few days because I had to leave the house where I was brought up at, and the blog that nurtured me into a decent writer. On the other hand, I sort of feel relieved because perhaps this move will give me the strength I need for when I move to the UK.

Hopefully, from Tuesday onwards I’ll be able to resume work on the redesign when the cable company installs broadband at my mother’s apartment, and I’ll resume blogging here as usual. So I’ll see you next Tuesday readers, and thank you for your comprehension.

As I stand here typing this, I can’t help but to wonder how many people have “accidentaly” stumbled upon an unprotected Wireless network and have tried to use for no good misschief.

I live in two homes at the moment, my father’s where I have my “office” and where I usually do all computer-related tasks, and my mother’s apartment which is sort of like a weekend resort where I can just sit back and relax without the drudgery of the internet life.

Even though I enjoy being here, my hectic schedule, and the lack of an internet connection have sometimes come between what I need and want to do, but today, I surprisingly came across a slightly weak signal for a wireless network and managed to connect to it.

Despite being happy, after establishing an internet connection the first thing I did was to see if I could detect the owner’s computer, and if he was protected. My first concern was to alert him. Unfortunately, he isn’t, so there doesn’t seem to be anything that can stop me from using this privilege as much as I like. So should I?

No.

I hate to use such a corny quote such as this one that has been repeated half a dozen time in the Spiderman movies, but “with great power comes great responsibility”. When I told a friend of mine about my “discovery”, the first thing he told me was that I shouldn’t download too many things, because the owner might have limited traffic (in Portugal, most of the ISPs have very limited download limits).

If you’re relatively tech-savvy, going to any website that tests your connection, like SpeedTest.net, will give you an idea of how good the connection is. Thankfully, I have determined that this connection is one of the more expensive ones, so there’s plenty of bandwidth and unlimited traffic.

Being aware of this fact, should I take the opportunity to download things via P2P? That depends on whether the owner is using the connection or not. A quick trip to Microsoft Network will usually tell you if there are any other computers connected.

Should I alert the owner? Definitely. But right now it’s 2am, so I’ll do it tomorrow if he’s at home. How can I detect where the Wifi is coming from? Well, basically I just have to do a small trip with my laptop turned on and check when the signal gets strong or weak. I should be able to easily determine the floor, and I already know on which side of the apartment the router is on.

A lot of people avoid wireless networks, and technology altogether because they are badly informed or don’t bother reading the manual to properly protect themselves. While some could seize this oportunity to abuse the connection as much as they can. I will use it to help the owner, and “save him” from future problems with less mature people.

After my harsh breakup, and my father’s coincidental retirement, I have decided, for both personal and financial reasons, to move to the United Kingdom and start off a new career there.

Being in an island that works with a lot of international groups, where many Brittish people come to live in, certainly gives me an advantage. And my friends and family have been quite supportive so far. Also, thanks to my father’s involvement with the Rotary club international I may even be able to get some support from UK members.

I feel sad about leaving my friends and my family behind. But I also feel excited, nervous and motivated to start off on a new career and explore a world which is completely different from this small, secluded and peaceful island.

On the bright side of things, I’ll be closer to many more international companies, with a lot of opportunities to develop my skills and to earn a better payment. I have been looking at many job offers, and I’m happy to say that my CV can fit most of them, even the most demanding ones.

This also means that Design Journal will return, and thus I will start transforming the design you’ve been seeing during the past months into transitional XHTML and CSS. As for Anime, I’ve been watching a few here and there, but for the time being, I must focus on my future and on my skills, so don’t expect much Anime content in the near future.

I put this one under both the journal and rants, because it’s a little of both. My girlfriend and I recently broke off, or in her own terms, she wanted some “space”, so I gave her it, willingly, knowing that my space was just about to be taken from me.

There’s nothing worse than forcing a person into being with you. That is something that has always worried and plagued me, for as long as I’ve lived. It’s funny how you feel, after all of the goals that you set disappear, because your relationship ended. Surely, other people go through harsher hardships. Some relationships leave emotional scars, or babies to rise. I can’t say I’ve experienced the later so much, although I can understand, or at least relate to it a bit. But I can certainly relate to the first.

You can’t help but to compare yourself to the one who replaced you. People who’ve seen her, with him, tell me that they have no idea what she sees in him, compared to me. I know that some people will say anything they can, just to make the other feel happier, but I can’t admit that I don’t think about it myself. I don’t look at him as someone inferior, just someone fortunate to have seized the moment, but perhaps unfortunate when the future rises.

It’s funny that all of the things that we promised to each other: honesty, regardless of the consequences, friendship, even if we became separated; all seem to break as easily as the words came out of our mouths at that time. It’s funny how all the moments, the pictures, the love we shared, the love we made, the things we cherished, the people we were with, all disappear, and turn into nothingness, when compared to the pain of losing one another.

I hope that no one else ever comes to know this pain, no one else but her. What goes around, comes around. I have to believe that, or else I’ll lose my sanity. And right now, it’s the only thing I have left to lose. Everything else feels empty and meaningless.

Hello readers,

As you have probably already noticed, I haven’t made any Design Journal entries lately. At first it was because I wanted to give something to the Anime readers, but now something much more serious has happened, that forces me to temporarily stop making them.

I am having some personal problems, namely my relationship. As you can guess, it’s a bit hard to try and create something beautiful, when your feelings don’t correspond to that. I will continue to watch and post about Anime, I will probably need to watch a lot of it to overcome the hurt, if things take a wrong turn. But I wouldn’t expect any major Design Journal entries soon. At least until this part of my life is settled.

I’m not going to do like a blogger I knew, and keep my readers, as little in number as they may be, out in the cold. I can’t promise I will post twice a week, like I’ve been doing lately, but with the free time I have I might feel like giving a small monologue about my feelings and my relationship. Maybe it will even feature in the next Scrivs Tyme podcast, who knows?

I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all of the readers who already know of the situation and have been trying to give me moral support. Even though I can’t respond to is as well as I would like to, I just want to say that I appreciate it.

Hello everyone, I’m back, and I know I already broke some of the promises I made, sorry about that. First of all, my internet connection is now fix, sort of, well, at least it’s now acceptable. I currently have a 1 Megabit connection, but I’m still nowhere near getting the 8 megabit connection I want, even though my line supports it.

I finished watching Ouran High Host Club a few days ago, and it was excellent. I’ll be posting a full review of the series during this week, most likely on Wednesday. And feel free to nag me if I don’t, I’ve been a bit lasy with this blog lately.

I also didn’t put any picture of my vacation yet, due to 2 reasons. First, due to Yahoo!’s decision to force “old-school” users of Flickr register a Yahoo! account in order to use it, and secondly because I lent my camera to Cristina, my girlfriend, for a few days. But right now it is in my posetion, and I’ll try to post the pictures asap.

Easter vacations have also ended, and I took all the time I had to rest, and catch up on Ragnarok Online, so you’ll probably see some articles regarding that also, perhaps a Hunter leveling guide. In any case, thanks for all who’ve kept visiting, and I hope you’ll continue to in the future.

I just returned from a short, yet satisfacting weekend on our neighbour island, Porto Santo. Although the weekend itself was nothing special, and a bit disapointing in some aspects I still managed to enjoy parts of it, mostly because I was with my girlfriend, but also, it was the first time we slept together in the non-naughty sense of the word
Franqly, I think I really needed, and deserved, a rest because of all the stress I’ve been going through lately with my new (and retarded) ISP. Also, it was nice for me to put mine and my girlfriend’s compatibility with each other.

And what did I conclude from that? That we have even more things in common than I expected. First of all, I discovered that we both dislike “planned” vacations. We went to the small island together with the Mini club (because my father-in-law has one, and is a member), and therefore we had a small schedule to keep. Although the schedule wasn’t really tight, it allowed little or no time whatsoever to go to the beach, which is the main reason why people go, and come back to Porto Santo.

On Saturday night, since I noticed that I might not have an oportunity to swim a bit on the sea, I decided to go for a quick swim, at the end of the day. It was a bit chilly and very windy at the time, so Cris (my girlfriend) didn’t join me in the water, but still went with me near the ocean. Cris’ “juvenile” sister also noticed that she probably wouldn’t get a chance to swim, so she seized the opportunity and went to the pool at the same time that I went to the ocean, and although it was against her mother’s will, she still went ahead, and her mother accompanied her.

Today, when we had another “break” between events, my girlfriend thought that she’d get the chance to swim in the ocean a bit. But this time, since it didn’t interest her sister to come along, she was unable to convince her parents to let her, and they even argued a bit briefly. In short, it seems that her sister’s desires are mandatory, but Cris’ are only “luxuries” that can’t be “afforded”.

Oh well… despite that small mishap, the rest of the weekend was still enjoyable. I drove in the Mini for the first time, and I enjoyed it greatly. Before sitting at the steering wheel, I thought that the car’s only carisma was just it’s form factor, but after driving it, I have a whole new impression. It truly is a brilliant car, and it’s a shinning example of what cars should be: compact, easy-to-use and fun-to-drive. It’s no wonder that most modern small-sized cars are usually succesful in terms of sales (like the Smart, for instance).

I’ll put a few pictures from the trip when I get my camera back (I forgot it in Cris’ purse). In the meantime, I’ll review a few “old” Anime series I’ve been seeing lately, since with my current “turtle” connection I’m unable to download the most recent episodes.

When I last spoke to you about my ISP problems, I had a 25kbps connection. And after more than 3 weeks, I still have the same damn connection, and the problem is nowhere close to being solved…

I have filed about 8 requests to change my connection to a faster one, and they still haven’t done it. Despite my best efforts, e-mails, phone calls, the situation still isn’t resolved. The most agrevating thing about it, is when I make the phone calls, because I always have to tell the same story over and over again, and that can really add up to the nerves, because no matter how I look at it, I should be upset, and I should be complaining more and more. But I tried that before and it didn’t work, now I don’t even know what to do anymore…

When I last went to the phone company that supplies the service, the nice lady there contacted an internal number and asked for an emergency fix of the situation. I felt a bit happy to receive such a treatment, at least she understood my situation and was doing everything in her power to fix it. But now that I finally see that even that call resulted in nothing I’m perplexed.

Has anyone ever gone through a similar situation? What should I do next? (Besides complaining more of course)

I’m a few minutes I’m leaving to the phone company once again. Wish me luck readers…

I recently decided to go through the horribly slow, tedious, and upseting task of changing my ISP.

My old one just wasn’t cutting it, at all. A few months back, before the end of the year, I got a “supposed” upgrade from a 2 Megabit line to a 4 Megabit one but my download speed didn’t really gain any noticeable increase and my Torrent and P2P speeds dropped from 100Kbs+ to 20Kbs MAX.

So I decided to change to another ISP, that has better speeds and faster access times than my old one. The only problem, is that the person who made the ISP change for me in it’s store made a mistake and ordered a 256kilobite connection. That means that my downloads go 25Kbs max… so now I have to wait even longer for them to change it to the 8 Megabit connection I originally requested.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you how long this process took… I made the request last Wednesday to change my ISP, the internet only became available today, and now it will take up to 10 working days to change it once again.

And the Portuguese still wonder why our country is going through a crysis…

Oh, and the ironic thing about all of this is that even with a really slow connection (in terms of limits), I still download faster in P2P than with my old ISP…

Yesterday was my birthday, and although it wasn’t as good as I expected, I managed to land some pretty sweet deals thanks to some of my friends. Basically I came home with a 320GB HDD and a GeForce 7600 GS (AGP) to resurrect my “old” Pentium 4 PC.

I had a great lunch with some of my best friends (although they mostly talked about World of Warcraft) and a bit of free time with my girlfriend which is always great
I have been a bit busy with exams, reports, and other things, however I’m pretty sure that now I’ll be able to resume my normal posting and tell you about the recent Anime and Manga I’ve been seeing and watching.

Since I’m posting about my birthday, I’d like to say thank you to all the people who wished me a happy one, and to all of those that shared it with me, thank you all!