Say Cheese!

If you ever find yourself looking for a quality photographer for whatever reason, I'd recommend you check out http://www.advimages.co.uk it's worth checking out the website and looking through the portfolio even if you're not in any need of photos. Alistair Vannet is a childhood friend of mine and his work is genuinely very impressive. He has supplied images to agencies, organisations and magazines and also works freelance.

Cheers, caKes.

Plans for Summer..

This Summer I'd have loved to be working on DARE but I'm choosing to work full time in Burger King over instead because I intend on moving out next year and I would like to have a good amount of cash saved up before committing myself to that. Burger king is good fun to be honest, pay isn't great but the hours are alright and the people are brilliant and it's good experience for me as I'm a supervisor so having a small managerial position in a real company is a good place to learn. I'll certainly apply for DARE next year though.

Other than working I would ideally like to get a professional website up and running, I'll have to dig out some old Photoshop skills and Dreamweaver maybe, see what I can throw together. It's either that or I pay for a website haha! I want to have quite a design based website though that shows off my creative side and that I'm capable of more than just managerial work. Since initially I'd applied for Computer Arts but had a change of heart at the last minute! I'll include all the documentation I've worked on in the past aswell as level designs and concepts which I'll also work on during the summer such as design in Unreal Engine which I have already dabbled in as part of my Advanced Interaction Module, screenshots which I've included in this post and a map created in Photoshop.

Another thing I'll do is throw my CV around local Dundee companies, perhaps even a little further afield as well, since I drive. Never know, maybe I could get lucky and land a placement over next year, small chance but always a possibility worth looking into. My main concentration though, other than working in BK will be gaining a real web presence and portfolio and really try to build on my skills in programs I already know as well as learning new ones. I'm keen to learn and I want to show that.

Cheers, caKes.

Why caKes?

Well I can't honesty remember how long ago exactly it all began but I do know it was either my first or second year in high school. Back then it was "cool" to share your MSN address with absolutely everyone, mmm popularity based on number of online friends. Sad much? Well it seems to have been substituted by the likes of Bebo and MySpace these days.

Anyway, I didn't have an email at the time, never even knew "Hotmail" existed so a couple friends helpmed me set up my account. I thought I'd be a smart arse and call myself "Jimbob@hotmail.com".. it was in use. So being a bit of a muppet I think to myself "what will noone in the world have thought of...." and JimbobPancakes became my new alias.

After a couple years had passed I stumbled upon a game named Halo.. You may have heard of it ;)
Now Halo was the first online game I had ever played, I'm talking about the PC version here by the way. So I was unsure about all this online fuss but I figured I'd give it a go anyways. I needed a name, and of course JimbobPancakes was my choice however, I was limited in the amount of characters I could use and so It was shortened to J_PaNcaKes..

I didn't take long to pick the game up and found myself winning most games I played, soon after I was invited to a clan (no idea what it was but "yeah sure!"). I was to wear a clan tag as part of my alias now, so it had to be shortened once again.. And so just caKes because my Halo name. I went on to lead my own clan and became one of the top EU players competing with the best in the world at the time.

A couple years back I trained my little brother just for the fun of it, I had no idea he'd pick it up so well (almost as well as I did haha.) Currently he is possibly in the top ten players in the world, but he still can't beat me ;)

cheers, caKes.