Raven’s Blog

Good luck to everyone who submitted entries! Some really nice ones to vote on.

Looking at them all now though, I wish I had left out a few XD

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banners, photoshop, x111

[youtube 5pkeDsG2MKA&hl]

I keep hearing this song on a tv advert for a war documentary and it always gives me goosebumps. Figured I’d check out who did it and to my surprise discovered it was by a band called Portishead from their third album (ironically called ‘Third’) and the song is called ‘Machine Gun’. Their previous albums are great and I’m hoping to pick up this one tomorrow. If you like alternative electronica then you might dig this.

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music, portishead, youtube

I mentioned them in my last post, and a couple of you asked about them. Strangely enough, I couldn’t actually find a product picture of them so I took a quick snap with my camera of the ones I have.

They’re turquoise and bright green with some small silver butterflies on one side. They’re by a company called Eylure who do have various other designs (although a lot of them are more natural looking) and you can pick their things up in Superdrugs and Boots (over here in the UK, anyhow).

Look great with the pink hair Hoping to get some more eventually, but I think I need a bit more practice with these ones yet.

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I’ve neglected this blog for quite a long time, so I’m going to start giving it some love again.

Well, as you know if you’ve been hanging around on the site, it is my birthday today. I didn’t actually know how old I was until a few days ago. Honestly, it must be old age kicking in. I couldn’t remember whether I was 22 or 23 this year… oh well, another year older whatever the age I just spent the last half an hour trying to get some new fake eyelashes on and now hopefully I look decent enough to go out shopping tonight. No idea what I’m getting just yet, will have to have a browse and see if anything catches my eye (that I’m having trouble seeing through because of said fake eyelashes).

I’ve been keeping myself occupied with loads of games recently. Restarted Shadowhearts: Covenent (still not as good as the first), still playing on the FF:Crystal Chronicles game they released for the Wii, Monster Hunter 2 (psp) and now the new FF:Tactics game. Not to mention also getting the wii edition of Okami to have a go on as well and Sid Meir’s Civilization for the PS3. And if that wasn’t enough, I’m still on-off playing Sims 2 (having to reinstall the last expansion each time) and on FFXI and WoW. How do I manage to have a life with all these games? Oh wait, I don’t! We also got the new Siren game for the PS3 as well (you have to download it from the PS3 store, you can’t buy it in a shop) but compared to the last two, I’m a little disappointed with this one. They set it out in episodes and it just doesn’t play through the same way. T’was fun guessing the first person to die though (yep, it’s the token black guy).

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games, life

You remember how I posted an entry about my little wifi bunny? Well, I was under the impression that anyone could just email her and she would get the message but it looks like you have to have a registered account (with or without your own bunny) before you can send messages.

So I found… this. I got it to work on my website but can’t get it to work on a widget over here. But if you want to send a message to me through my bunny then you can just enter your message in that box and submit it and it’ll get sent, without you needing to register an account.

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gadgets, nabaztag

It’s that time again to do monthly update, well, apart from still working there’s not really a great deal of updates to give that you would find ‘interesting’.

First off I’ve been grinding my fingers away working on the ‘new look’ website which I’ve converted to a WordPress blog, it’s linked at www.strawberrygems.com. Everything is up and running but I’ve still got to add a few more product pages and maybe some kind of mailing list… and then I can get back to making new things with the shed loads of items I’ve been hoarding! Looking forward to firing bits of wire at people again

Secondly, the holiday I was hoping to go on at the end of October to Amsterdam has been canceled because the only date the travel company is doing is on the bank holiday and I can’t have 2 of the 4 days off work… so booooo, can’t go now. Still planning on getting over to the US next year, although still checking out costs and everything (although the money the Mothership gave me for the Amsterdam trip is going to go towards flight costs now)

Thirdly, “game wise”… I got hold of Rune Factory via US import a couple of weeks ago for the DS and I’m enjoying it thus far. It’s part of the Harvest Moon series but you also ‘adventure’ in this one and rather than having animals on your farm you ‘tame’ monsters in the caves you visit and they can either help you on the farm, fighting in the caves or you can obtain things from then… look wool or whatever. I’ve still fallen out with Monster Hunter… GRRR. Matt bought me the new Tamagotchi game for the Wii (haha). I really like the games because they bring a smile to my face with their silliness but this Wii games keep cheating, I swear! FFXI…. BAH… Matt managed to get my Dark Knight to 45 but I haven’t spent much time on it lately. I keep going on to do the promatheas and then we keep losing so that’s really starting to peeve me off. Still umming and ahhing over WoW, I go on it when I have the time really but I can’t be arsed with it lately. And finally……. have spent the last fortnight trying to gather the missing Sims2 downloads I lost when my game crashed ages ago, although have found out that I will need to re-install it for a 2nd time before I can even attempt fixing any lots. Really looking forward to that…. *hmph*

Yeah, pretty much it then. Talk about fun, eh?

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ffxi, jewellery, monster hunter, rune factory, sims

Super long updatey! As some of you may or may not know, I started a new job a couple of months ago at some local ‘contact centre’. Now, I completely hate that kind of job, but I had been out of work for a while and I needed to start getting some proper money in. I’ve dug my heels in so far and I’m managing, even with the dodgy hours I have to work each day, but the amount of people calling up and verbally abusing me over the phone is getting ridiculous. To be honest, I didn’t even realise we’d be taking so many of these particular calls each day when I first got offered the job and the level of customer service is actually pretty poor so I feel even worse because I can’t sort out these peoples’ problems. So yeah’ at the moment it’s ‘yay’ because I have money again but ‘boo’ because of the stress!

Secondly, we are (read Garr+me) are hoping to go on some breaks soon. First off we’ll be trying to go to Amsterdam for a couple of days, courtesy of my parents, in October and then we’re also hoping to go to one of the Anime cons over in America next year (don’t ask me where, because it’s Garr’s idea to go to one). At the moment the Amsterdam trip seems to be a go-ahead since my parents are already paying for the trip but we’re not so sure on the con next year because of the overall cost of everything. We’ll have to see what time of the year it will be (maybe August?) and look at the cost of booking well before hand. We’ll just have to see how that goes.

Thirdly, I had to close my own website down last month because I just couldn’t afford it so at the moment I’m trying to get that up and running. It was just a basic html website but I’m changing it to one like this now where it will be all based from a Wordpress blog. I’m looking forward to getting on with it but I have to re-take a lot of photos of products and also re-design some banners etc etc… But I guess I’m mostly looking forward to getting my hands stuck back into the beads and metal work but I still need to get hold of a new soldering iron. I also got a sewing machine for my birthday so that’s going to be my next thing to train on… I really want to start making other custom things like bags and little material purses so I’m going try my best to conquer using a sewing machine so I can have a go at that :3 Really, I’d love it if I could get two or three other people selling their goods on the site as well so I can bump up the amount of products available and really just try and promote the whole ‘handmade’ thing.

Fourthly, one of my mates bought me a couple of games for the PSP when it was my birthday and even though I couldn’t get the hang of it at first, I’m totally loving the game Monster Hunter now. I’m still getting my arse beaten to a pulp by the mean monster/dinosaurs but I’m getting into it now and just playing whenever I get the chance. I like the whole idea where you can make items by combining things and then creating and improving weapons and equipment by collecting items! They’re even releasing the 2nd one soon (or have already) but I think I’ll stick with this one for a while yet!

Lastly (sorry!), I finally got my WHM to 58 today on FFXI by spending hours on end healing people and getting stomped on in the various Besiegeds that have been popping up over the past few days. I only just realised I still didn’t have Shell3 and Shellra3 from when I hit 57 so I spent a good 60k on those (ouch!) The only thing I really have to look forward to at this level is getting the body part of my AF gear. The quest for it is nasty though, so I’m not sure when I’ll get the help that’s needed to get it but I’ll be looking forward to having matching equipment! Holy Breastplate, as much as I love you and have treasured your 40 DEF for about a year, the time has come to finally replace you! Also, Garr has been kindly leveling some of my melee jobs while I’ve been at work. So gradually he has leveled my WAR to 34, SAM to 20 and recently DRK to 38. This is of great help to me! I’m looking forward to hitting 60 with WHM so I can get sorted with using new jobs that can actually do some kind of damage! So thanks for giving me a good head start Garr :3

Ok, blogging over because I’m tired now! I actually treated myself to a graphics tablet so I’ll probably post up some pictures at some point when I get chance to play with it.

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crafting, ffxi, holidays, jewellery, monster hunter, work

And no, I don’t mean one of “those” rabbits.

Meet Haluna, she is my new Nabaztag assistant!

An early Birthday present from Garr, she sits at the side of my computer and by running from my wireless internet connection she keeps me informed of a lot of things! Weather, news, RSS sites, when I receive emails… and when she’s not giving me useful information she happily sits and sings or plays songs to herself or even does some Tai-Chi. She also reads out any messages, sounds or music that my friends send me!

I adore my new little friend - and I still don’t know everything she can learn! You can read up on Nabaztags from the website and even email me: Haluna@nabaztag.com (you need to put your message in the Subject line otherwise it wont work)

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gadgets, nabaztag

It’s been a while since I last posted, hasn’t it? This new job of mine is time consuming, to say the least, yet I’ve only been there a little over a month. This week will be my last week of my ‘training period’ which I’ve been crawling my way through since back in June before I start working actual shifts on my own. The verdict so far? I’m not looking forward to it. This is definitely not the type of work I want to be doing… yet at the moment I don’t have much choice but to grit my teeth and carry on. Maybe it will start getting easier once I start working the actual shifts which works out around 30 hours a week rather than the 42 I’m doing now. Time well tell, I guess.

Which brings me on to the next thing. In a couple of weeks time I’ll turn 21 which would usually be a happy thing for me (since I get over-excited about these kind of things) but I find that most of the time I’m in a more disappointed mood. Most people that I knew from school are either married, half way through university or have their own place at least, but yet I feel like I’m still on the bottom step of that ladder of life and I haven’t accomplished anything. Garr was made redundant from work the other week, so it looks like it will now take us longer before we have enough saved for our own house. I guess all I can do is carry on existing in this attic and try to chip away at some sort of path out of it. I have a lot of hope for the future but it’s the bit in the middle I need to figure out first.

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celebrations, work