Random | A Slice of Cuplet

Before you start, yes, I know. I’ve done it again. I’ve let the months slip by since my last post. There you’ve been, sat on the edges of your seats, desperate for the next instalment of my random shenanigans, patiently waiting, and I’ve not so much as uttered a hint of what I’ve been up to. Not even a tweet. Oh, what a naughty blogger! Bad, bad Cuplet…

So apologies, oh loyal few who actually read my nonsense (which, according to official stats is now 10 of you. Wow! Hold the phones! Double figures!?! The blog really is starting to snowball, huh ;). But the sheer pressure of the scale to which the blog has EXPLODED isn’t the reason for my absence from the typing-words-and-adding-pretty-pictures thingy. If only! Nope. Instead it’s been a cacophony of set backs, mishaps, visual intervention and stumbles (literally!) that have put the mockers on me getting to the laptop to commence the verbal diarrhoea that you all, apparently, kinda enjoy. Weirdos.

First it was illness that struck; one that had me so knackered I barely had the energy to brush my hair, what was left of it anyways (it was coming out by the handful). 3 months and a gazillion tablets later, I’m still not fixed, but at least I’m looking less like a walking corpse, although if the wind blows too hard, I sound like a tube of frickin’ Smarties. After that, it’s just been a blur of pill popping, sleeping, Olympic viewing (that’d be the visual intervention – seriously, I didn’t do anything else during those two weeks!), family crises, and the final straw, a spectacular fall at a train station that left me bloodied, bruised and unable to use my right hand for pretty much anything. And so we go full circle, back to not being able to brush my hair again. Good grief.

Now that we’re up to speed on the reasons why I’ve been quiet on the blog front, shall I crack on with telling you what I did manage to get up to, in amongst all this ridiculous couldn’t-make-it-up-even-for-a-soap-although-come-to-think-of-it-this-is-just-the-kinda-thing-a-really-awful-soap-would-put-out-and-label-as-great-TV stuff? Yes? Good. Straight into it then, with gusto…!

So my last ‘something’ of 2012 was rubbing oil onto naked strangers in a workspace on the outskirts of Brighton. You all remember that one, right? Yeah, of course you do, you filthy lot. Well, that was one of the big ones from the list, one of the ‘something’s I’d been wanting to try for years. And it was pretty awesome! So it was gonna take a lot to top it, especially as I was still riding high from the great time I’d had there. Now, this is where things get tricky list-wise. Jump to another incredible something on the list, and you’ll exhaust all the amazing ones way too quickly, so everything left will feel like a complete anticlimax. But go for something that’s just kinda ok, and it’ll put a complete downer on your buzz. I call this ‘The Scale of Awesome’. And what a tricky blighter it is (particularly as all the things on my list are all pretty awesome). But you get help from contributing factors, like weather (I’m not doing outside stuff in the winter, oh hells to the no!), cost (that thing that costs a couple hundred pounds, yeah that’s not gonna happen after that huge credit card bill I just got through the post) and third parties (I wanna do it, and I’m dragging you along too, but wait, you’re not free that month, DAMMIT!). So, lots of things to consider. And having taken all these things into account, drawn a flow chart and reviewed the data, there was only one thing that I was gonna do for my July ‘something’…

It was meant to be sunny. It was. I checked and re-checked the weather. Religiously. Obsessively. Admittedly, I was not happy when the beginning of July turned into being one of the wettest on record. Seriously weather, what was that about?! You knew I had plans. Outside plans. And you still bring the rain. I thought we’d talked about this. Obviously I talked and you, as always, decided not to listen. Typical response of a state of atmosphere. Idiot. Anyways, although the rain had cleared up the week before, I still got a message on my voicemail two days prior to d-day, advising me to bring my wellies. Awesome! Now, I’m not usually one for mud, but my gorgeous wellies (purchased in the wake of the snow earlier in the year, only for the white stuff to disappear as soon as my debit card hit the card reader) had yet to be properly tested, and they were aching for an airing. So bring it on! This would only serve to make the day more interesting, surely? And if the prospect of mud, and bogs, and breaking in virgin wellies wasn’t exciting enough, I wouldn’t be alone on this adventure. Oh no. Better still, the person I was taking with me had NO CLUE what we were about to embark on. Oh man, this was gonna be good!

So, on one slightly overcast Saturday morning in late July, myself and my unwitting ‘something’ cast member (my mum) headed for an unassuming pub in the middle of the Surrey countryside, donned our wellies (which took an inordinate amount of time. Seriously, what’s up with those boots?!) and made our way through the pub garden, to a field out the back, to meet the main players of the days adventure. The 7′ tall, robust framed, woolly (and slightly lacking in personal hygiene) main players. We were here, and we were gonna go llama trekking through the Surrey Hills. Awesome 😀

I have no idea how I heard about llama trekking in Surrey. I knew as a child that there were a few farmers that bred llamas locally, and must have stored that obviously very useful piece of information in the back of my mind since then, along with times tables and the names of all Henry VIII wives. So when I started working on my list of ‘somethings’, this was one of the first I researched, and was thrilled, quite rightly, when I found out I hadn’t in fact made it all up in a fit of childhood whimsy. Surrey Hills Llamas was the place that was going to fulfil all my llama trekking dreams, and amazingly only 15 minutes away from where I grew up! And they had so many options for treks too; my head was spinning with all the potential llamaness. Picnic treks, champagne treks, overnight camping treks. You can even take a little wander through the woods with the furry fellas on Christmas day! How cool is that? 🙂

Having somewhat surprised my mum with how we were going to be spending the day – “You’re so weird. Where do you get that from?!” (oh mum, we all know where, so less pretending please…) – it was time to be given our llamas. Exciting! Lovely Julie, our trek leader and fountain of knowledge of all things llama, sussed everyone up at the meet and greet, and then matched us, personality wise, with our perfect llama companion. I was enjoying this part a lot, and she was nailing it on the head every single time. For the young Spanish couple, playing by their own rules by not bringing proper footwear, and thereby ruining their brand new Converse in the shin high mud bogs, Pandu, the leader of the group, who took no prisoners. For the quiet, polite mother-daughter combo, Goji, a gorgeous black/brown llama, the youngest and most subdued. And for me & mum? Mungo. Oh dear. The name says it all really. Julie described him as friendly, but not the brightest in the bunch. Not by a long stretch. Yeah. Well. Maybe we’ll just gloss over that… 🙂

Llamas assigned, it was time to get our trek on. Yays! This would be a nice leisurely amble through the gorgeous woodland of the North Downs, leading these gentle, laid back creatures on a fun little adventure. Or so I thought. They may look gentle and unassuming from afar, even from over the fence, but get in the paddock with them, up close and personal, and they’re kinda intimidating. They’re 7′ tall for a start! And even in my wedge heeled wellies (I rarely do flats, people) they were still towering over my 5′ something frame. And they are strong! And stubborn! We’d been told to make sure they didn’t eat the trees on the right hand side of the first stretch of track. Well that would have been great, if we weren’t also told to have the llamas on our right hand side as much of the time as possible, if the trail was actually wide enough to fit a person and a llama side by side, and if what remained of the path wasn’t basically a muddy trench of an assault course. And did I mention that llamas are frickin’ strong and stubborn! Just picture it. Me, all 8 stone of me, still weakened from my illness, trying frantically to pull a 21 stone llama out of a tree, whilst I sink knee-deep into a mud path. Now picture that, on loop, for 5 hours. And add the fact that Mungo was particularly keen on getting at the bits of tasty goodness in the centre of every other tree, come hell or high water, meaning yours truly soon became very familiar with half of the surrounding woodland, resulting in wearing almost as much brush in my hair as he had in his coat, and you’re almost as good as there! Sadly, I have no pictures of this to increase your side-splitting enjoyment. Such a shame. But here’s a mug shot of me with my woolly nemesis…

Mungo and me – all smiles now, but we’d just had another trip into the shrubbery!

Sarkiness and tree assault aside, mum and I had a brilliant time trekking with the llamas, and all the other weirdos who thought trudging through the muddy trails of the North Downs with these crazy, amazing animals was a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon 😀 They really do all have their own personalities, which surprised me to be honest. Obviously Mungo was a few sandwiches short of a picnic, and completely run by his desire for food (um, actually, maybe Julie was on to something when she paired us up…). Louis, a rather playful member of the group, who had been assigned to a dad and his teenage daughter, liked to mill about at the back of the pack and then, without warning, would make a frantic break to the front, dragging the poor dad at speed along with him! It was bloody hilarious! Yes, the paths were muddy, and trying to plough through on your own would have been difficult enough, so add a llama to the equation and it all gets completely ridiculous. But that’s half the fun right? And by mid afternoon, the sun had finally come out, our wellies were drying up nicely, and the llamas even had time to enjoy a little roll around in a sand pit in the middle of the woods – you’ve not lived until you’ve seen something that large drop like a rock and roll about on its back like a dog with an itch. Then, when we reached the summit of our walk, wow. The views of the North Downs below us were just incredible. In fact, all the views were stunning. What a beautiful place Surrey is, when the sun is high in the sky, and you’ve got a llama behind you chewing your hair…

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Would I recommend trying your hand at llama trekking? Hells yeah! It’s brilliant fun, great cardio exercise (if you’re into that sort of thing), and totally ridiculous. So, what’s stopping you?! Get online, and book up some time with the woolly ones! But some friendly advice from a veteran; make sure you’ve eaten your Weetabix, and don’t bother brushing your hair 😉

Q1 of 2012 down, and my list of completed ‘new somethings’ is looking quite impressive already: fitness boot camps, yoga classes, attending trendy launch parties, jewellery making, becoming an organ donor, even mentoring someone in running! Phew! It’s no wonder my posts have been getting few and far between; I’m too busy doing stuff to be writing about the stuff that I’m doing. Oops! Some balance is required in this respect I think… Anyway, it’s all been great fun and, without wanting to sound smug, not too taxing (although some of the yoga positions I’ve attempted defy gravity!). But all this was about to change. It was time to take things to a new level. It was time to engage my brain. That’s right people; I was gonna go geek.

I have the right genetic make-up to be a nerd. I’m whiter than Casper the Friendly Ghost. Dressed as a sheep. In a snowfall. Covered in talcum powder. And at the first hint of sunlight I burn redder than the sun. I can’t even sit under a 60 watt bulb without my factor 120 on. I’m as blind as a bat without my geek-chic specs on. And I was always hopeless at sport. Except running, which I’m quite good at. But that makes sense. Nerds should be adept at this, you know, from all the running away from bullies and stuff. Anyway, I digress.

Last week I made good on a threat I’d been holding in reserving for a few years, by popping along to a course of unadulterated geekery run by my friend Seb Lee-Delisle. I’ve been wanting to attend one of his courses for a while – they always sound so cool – but the content has always been way too advanced for my teeny little brain to comprehend. So when I found out he was putting together a creative JavaScript course for complete noobs, and realising this would fit in rather nicely with my ‘ new somethings’ plan, I signed up. Two birds, one stone. Nice.

I was apprehensive in the days leading up to this nerd-fest, being that my only attempts at anything vaguely like coding were the two frenetic weeks I spent teaching myself basic HTML and CSS last year, to get my website up and running. And this didn’t really give me an edge. It’d be like attending a course to learn Spanish and saying “well, I kinda know some French”. Yeah, really not very helpful. The ‘creative’ element – given top billing in the course title – was giving me the heebie-jeebies too, cos I’m about as creative as a stick. So the prospect of spending 2 days blinding tapping away at my hefty laptop, employing my patented ‘nod-and-smile’ technique every time something was said that I didn’t understand (I anticipated having a major case of neck ache and face freeze by the end of the course!) and trying to cover up my lack of creative prowess by using the brightest colours I could code up, to cause temporary blindness, was a little unnerving. But as I’m always being told, particularly by said teacher of this course, “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. Ok fine. I’ll feel the fear and do it anyway. Times 100! Bring it!

The dates rolled round, and suddenly here it was, Geekment Day. Or Geekment Days; it was a 2 day course after all. And what a fun couple of days it was! The class were a lovely bunch of fellow noobs from all sorts of backgrounds, all eager to learn this weird JavaScript stuff. The girls outnumbered the boys 4:1, which I hadn’t expected, and it was pretty cool to see so many girls interested in learning programming :). Day 1 kicked off with Seb showing us some basic drawing commands, and how we could use these to make shapes, dictate colours and even move stuff around the canvas! Cool! Check out some of the pretty stuff I made:

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After we had these basic commands down, and we’d stopped sniggering at the slightly rude sounding terms we’d been learning all morning – “Now remember, it’s really important that you stroke your Rects before you fill your Rects…” (snigger) – we were tasked with creating a little critter with wobbly bits and everything! Here’s my offering: click on the bunny then watch him wobble as you move your mouse across the canvas!

Kinda cute, right? And I almost understand how I put him together, which is pretty cool! The rest of the class made awesome creations too, from wobbly aliens to grinning faces to a hilariously rude body part. I won’t mention exactly what it was (where would be the fun in that), but will say that, when it came to Day 2 and particle systems, the owner of the anatomical graphic wasted no time in working on an eruption of particles to ‘finish off’ her work. Nuff said. Needless to say, immature as we quite clearly were, we all had to have a sneaky look at her laptop, laughed like naughty school kids and collaboratively decided that her offering won the entire course.

Day 1 completed, pretty stuffs coded by yours truly, so onto Day 2, with gusto! Well, I started with gusto. It soon petered out when Seb started schooling us in while loops and for loops and arrays… What the flip?! Queue all manner of confusion and brain-frying and frustration, admittedly mostly from my corner of the room. We were now into scary territory. The bit I’d been dreading. The moment where I’d found myself staring at my screen, fixated with wide-eyed gormlessness and not understanding even a hint of what I was looking at! Oh how I longed to go back to stroking and filling my rects. Reassuringly though, this stuff seemed to be a bit of a stumbling block for everyone. But we were lucky. Seb is an excellent teacher, and talked us through this terrifying world of unfamiliar terminology, happily answering all our “um, I may be being really dumb here, but…” questions. And it started to sink in. Well, for the others perhaps. As for me, I was still clueless! But I bluffed my way through until the afternoon, chomping at the bit for the exciting culmination of our 2 days of coding – PARTICLE SYSTEMS! Ooo particles, you’re so pretty. And so impressive looking. Shapes that appear from nowhere in an explosion of awesomeness. Aahhhhhhhh! Ones that are glued to your mouse and whizz across the screen, following your every whimsical move. Weeeeeeeee! Who knew that after such a short space of time, complete JavaScript novices could be creating such visually stunning effects. What a brilliant way to end 48 hours of nerdy wizardry :D. It’d be rude not to share some of my particle examples, so here you go. Click on the images to see them get animated…

That’s some pretty awesome stuff right there! And after only two days. Amazing!!! So I’d like to say a huge thanks to Seb for running a brilliant course for us coding virgins. I’m always blown away by the stuff Seb does, so getting to see the mechanics of how he can create visually beautiful things with code was really eye-opening. Understanding it (for the most part anyway…) was even more amazing! But being able to type some gobbledygook that can barely count as English into the notepad, and instantly see it come to life in the canvas – wow. That was so cool it almost hurt a little. As expected, the anticipation was way more painful than the actual act, but we’ve all come away, Javascript cherries popped, feeling nicely sated thank you very much ;).

And that’s it, my first Creative JS course completed, and I’m actually feeling a little impressed with myself – yay! So am I now a fully fledged geek? Um, probably not. But this has definitely gotten me a few steps closer. And seeing as I’ve now become inseparable from my laptop, playing with the variables in my examples from dusk till dawn, I think it’d be acceptable to declare my status as nerd-in-training. I’m now the proud owner of a big orange book, which professes to be able to learn me in the ways of processing. Hmm. We’ll see… I’m still tweaking the stuff I created in class, and if any of my random changes result in something mind-blowingly gorgeous (it could happen, right?) I’ll definitely be posting them. But for now, it’s glasses on, curtains drawn, laptop launched, and brain engaged. All systems code!