OddballGreg - Consumer Law, Web Design And Butterflies

Pretty Pretty Butterflies. No, still prefer unicorns though.

What does Consumer Law, Web Design and Butterflies all have in common? Absolutely nothing, not counting the fact that I've had an interesting week involving all three. Let's talk about that.

First and foremost, I should point out that I have no idea if these multi-topic posts are preferred over the older single topic style. You should probably mention which you prefer somewhere I can read it. Just maybe. Anyways, onto the interesting events. 

First and foremost being consumer law. This week while brainstorming new IT related services for GITR, the IT company I began working for in earnest recently and mentioned in last week's blog post, I had the interesting task of writing up a Terms and Conditions contract specific to the hardware repair services we were brainstorming for. As it turns out, the consumer laws are fairly easy to understand in South Africa, (at least I thought so), and after a day of contemplation, revision, research (with much thanks to paralegaladvice.org.za for the linked document concerning consumer law), I managed to write out a set of Terms and Conditions which accurately covered everything necessary for the job to a degree that people who've written contracts before was impressed with. (I should stop bragging now.)

My work successes aside, I should point out that there are a great many personal benefits to knowing the laws of the country. You hear about it every day in South Africa as officials attempt to coerce bribes out of people, and in many cases the laws are broken by companies looking to pocket easy cash at the expense of the customer. The law is not difficult to understand, so do yourselves a favor and read up on it. (And suddenly I'm doing Public Service Announcements.)

Also, I've recently found all my time spent learning HTML and various other web design related skills to be of great use as part of the GITR services. As you might expect, the internet is kind've a big thing these days (*golf clap* Thank you, I'm brilliant at stating the obvious I know.), but for a lot of people, taking the time to learn how to simply do it all yourself is simply not an option, which is why companies like the one I work for now exist. Web design is somewhat rather hard to do thanks to a large variety of loops to jump through to get things to work usually. (This also happened to be part of what made me realize that a job is nothing more than you doing something crappy son that someone else can do something less crappy. Amazingly profound realization I know.) Still, it pays the bills and fits the bill for interesting and allows creative juices to flow. For those of you interested in learning about Web Design and such, and have the time to do so, be sure to read up on Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla, and maybe check out General Assembly's fantastic HTML tutorial to get a groundwork understanding of what's happening on the web these days. You won't regret it.

And that bring's us finally to Butterflies. How the hell do butterflies have anything to do with the previous 2 topics? They don't. For the most part, they came up at random as a request for a birthday present from a rather hilarious new acquaintance. Considering my erratic behaviour and usual reaction to such things, I figured, hey, why not, drawing a butterfly sounds like fun.

Beautiful, beautiful grayscale butterfly with a deformed body... Turns out that the camouflage is pretty good at confusing my sense of scale.

While I quite like my work... mostly, I think. I can see all the flaws, none-the-least being my inability to draw complicated insects properly even with guidance, I think the wings do look quite pretty. Perhaps next time i'll even get the wings to look like they belong to the same butterfly next time... maybe. For 6 hours of work though, it's not terrible. That said, as I was drawing this butterfly and realizing how different it was from the source picture (as seen in this posts header image), I couldn't help but have yet another of my profound epiphanies regarding the fact that every drawing I do while working from a source photo eventually hits a point in which it stops being a copy, and begins to be an artwork of it's self wherein I'm actually just drawing it from then on. It's an interesting thing to consider that even copies are unique in their own way.

Lastly, I felt it worth mentioning why this blog post was being put up so late at night simply because one one hand, I had thoroughly enjoyed the snarky commentary offered by the YouTube channel Dartigan as he proceeds to tell you why games are awful in a way only he can. (In the style of Cinema Sin, but we won't mention that. Teehee) In any case, I've linked the two video's that took up my time this evening below, which you should definitely give a watch and maybe subscribe to his channel if you enjoyed them.

In any case, that's more or less the interesting parts of this week that I've had as far as I can remember. Do you like the new multi-subject blog post format? Or do you think there is something that I could be doing that would make the posts even better. If so, do be sure to let me know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback as it helps us know that you like what we're doing. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and in the world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Try not to work too hard my friends.

OddballGreg - State Of The Not So Nation Affairs

I tried looking for a picture of baboons but this was the best I could find. Then I found out that the plural for baboons is not a congress and felt like a twit. I do believe that is Poe's Law at its finest.

Goodness me, the first blog post in over a week? Where has the time gone? What happened? And why are so many people making jokes about the government. Turns out a lot has been happening recently. Lets talk about that.

Those of you who have been long time readers of this blog have probably noticed things change over the 7 months that it's been active. Everything from 2 rebrandings, to significant changes in content, and the most recent spat of... nothing. All things considered, last week was the first time in 7 months that this blog has not seen a single update or post uploaded. No ridiculous commentary or introspective thought whatsoever. (Goodness me.)

So what does this mean? Is little Jimmy stuck in a well? Does the Cataclysm approach? Or has TCSA run out of steam? While I've never met Jimmy and the Cataclysm can't be ruled out, what I can say is that TCSA has most certainly NOT run out of steam. Mostly. Sort of. It's about as complicated as most people's Facebook relationship settings. (Married to the girl you met last week? REALLY?)

That said, things have changed, as they tend to do in life. For the better? While nobody can say for sure, I can say that as the sum of my experiences, that I have grown stronger for what I've gone through of late. (For those of you counting, that's 2 references to previous blog posts so far. Brownie points for knowing them.)

Jokes aside, some serious business has occurred since the new year began, and some occurrences of the old year still had consequences to play out, which have both directly and indirectly influenced the blog as a result. First and foremost notably is the fact that I have a job now. Or... multiple jobs. It's complicated (again). As one of the critical thinking co-founders of the IT start-up GITR based here in South Africa, my job is to be whatever the company needs me to be, which has ranged from the designing of online adverts, the management of social media, the design of websites and the researching of consumer laws. There's also some data capture, human resource management and various other clerical activities in there for good measure. Fantastic.

The downside to this fascinating new development is the arrival of the interesting conundrums of time, energy and creativity. The blog kind've doesn't pay, the new company kind've does, and those aforementioned resources are a finite daily resource better suited to filling my pockets. I love blogging and entertaining, but if it doesn't pay the bills, it becomes hard to blog with no internet or electricity. (Not that South Africa has been properly lit up too well of late. Google it.)

Matters of wealth aside, my blogging endeavors were not aided by a near soul crushing emotional breakdown I suffered after realizing some flaws in my own personality. (There's those good old deep discussions you all know and love.) While I would prefer not to go into details, the short-long version is that the end of my first relationship which you may remember my references to in the latter half of 2014 left me emotionally distraught. After spending the last of 2014 simply recovering enough to function as a happy individual once more, I eventually realized that I was pinning far too much of my happiness on the actions of other people. I would become infatuated with people I had hardly spoken to, and develop unrealistic expectations which always ended in disaster. Combine this with my nice-guy attitude being taken as a "I actually want something from you." attitude did not help this epiphany.

Suffice to say, as a person who bases part of their personality on making people happy, realizing that people don't trust your sincerity is a dangerous blow, one which may have been difficult to recover from were it not for the support of my friends, who I thank greatly for the many nights spent listening to depressed griping as I picked the pieces up and in the time honored Japanese tradition of Kintsukoroi, rebuilt the vessel with gold, accepting that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. (That's OddballGreg dialect for "while it was hard, I think I'm a better person for it.")

These two things made blogging... well, hard. A lack of enthusiasm or motivation can make doing even the things you have passion for a chore. Thankfully that episode is mostly behind me now. That said, JovialJman has his own reasons for not having been blogging. I can't speak for him though. Which brings us finally to the present. What is actually happening with the blog?

Well, all kinds of things I hope. Like anything I do, I'm unable to maintain simplicity, and everything has a reason for itself and each other. The easiest way I can explain it is that the blog was the unexpected result of an idea JovialJman and myself had long ago as we sought to start a YouTube channel. (I may have mentioned this in the past. Several times.) TCSA was born from this idea, and a blog never featured in the original scheme, but instead became part of the plan to gain viewership before our eventual debut on the grainy video cameras of the inexperienced. However, we don't have cameras or anything, so we're working towards that with GITR, which will then have the benefit of being advertised for being the TCSA channel sponsor. It kinda all works hand in hand in a weird way. Still, that's the status of TCSA in a nutshell. Until then however, rest assured, I shall be doing my best to kick both mine and JovialJman's hiney into gear to establish at least a basis of at least 2 posts a week (one each), despite our busy schedules.

Speaking of schedules, here I am with limited time, writing a blog post at 11PM at night, going out in the early morning tomorrow despite having had a long day today, and I decide it's a good idea to write politically oriented jokes about things I shouldn't talk about or something silly like that. Good thing there's a part of my brain that understands that my chirp with the header image above was probably bad enough and I should leave it at that, which leaves me in a state of being the metaphorical owner of a shirt which reads "I spent 2 hours writing witty satirical commentary about recent political events and all I got was censored. Also this lovely T-shirt."

Could be worse I suppose. Imagine 3 hours. Oh lordy lord... I need sleep.

In any case, I hope that you have appreciated this rather informative, and heartfelt post which may be the longest I've written yet. If so, do be sure to let me know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback as it helps us know that you like what we're doing. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and in the world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon. (Hopefully.)

Keep well my friends.