Hello, how do you do!?

So there’s going to be some big changes here, not changes that will force you to go explore and re-learn the website. Oh no, I think I’m done with the redesigning for now. But what is new will definitely clean up the site, introduce you a form of entertainment on Wednesday nights, bring all my works together, and make this blog/site a way better experience. I’ve got new shoes, a haircut, a more annoying personality and sleep deprivation from thinking this through all last night. BUT, nonetheless, I know what I’m doing (Probably.)

So what’s going on?

Ben-A-Ball United

No, I’m not starting up a football team… although that would be quite interesting… Since I started Ben-A-Ball I’ve been using all these different free services such as Zymic and 4Shared, Box.net and Dropbox.  There are many others that do different things, but the point is, it’s very untidy. By clicking on a download link for one of my programs it would take you to 4Shared or Box.net, although this is nice, it really takes away from the site, because it just feels … messy.

Zymic.com is a free hosting service that I joined in 2009 when I had my old blog, the reason I created it was that my old blog, (On Blogger.com) couldn’t store files, so I wanted something I could use to post downloads and stuff on.  I also used it as an update server for all my programs.  My account is now gone, I’ve deleted it. I haven’t pushed updates to all my programs, so they’re going to be a bit lost. Unfortunately people will have to come to the site and download new versions of the programs when they’re ready.  The other problem with Zymic is that because it’s a free service, many people create dangerous virus-ridden sites, this means that the shared IP is blacklisted and you can’t actually access my site on there.

I also used Zymic to send game development news to my games, I apologise to those incredibly weird people who actually still have those games, and play them. But it’s for the best. I’m bringing it all to this site.

Ben-A-Ball Downloads

One thing that the Downloads section of the website never offered very well, is downloads. They were displayed inside a disgusting grid and were linking to all other websites and … yeah, yuck. But now, Ben-A-Ball Downloads, is awesome.  Now its cleaner, displays all content created by myself, and you can easily download Software, Graphics and more organised by category.

Free Media

It’s also exciting to introduce the Free Media category of the Downloads Page, basically if you have a project to do, whether you make money out if it or not, there’s now a growing collection of completely free media to use. I plan to release “Ben’s Library” at some stage, which is my own collection of photography, recorded sound effects and music which I’ve built up over the years for use in my own videos and graphics.  So something to look forward to if you’re a YouTube developer who is sick of all those pesky copyright notices.

Ben-A-Ball Podcast

At this stage the Ben-A-Ball Podcast isn’t pumping out anything at all, but it will be soon, hence the reason iTunes has turned its nose up at it.  I planned on making the Ben-A-Ball Podcast about the posts I write on this blog, so, it will be. Every week a new podcast will come out, but they won’t appear on iTunes to begin with, so, that’s where this next heading comes in.

Talking about podcasts, want to hear something really exciting? For those that like NeWs! a school show that I’m the producer of, you might be interested to here that the NeWs! Podcast is now available on the iTunes Store! In case you missed it! Click here, here or here.

Vlog My Blog

Call it a late decision for a New Year’s Resolution, I will be producing this show that will be on every Wednesday on YouTube, it will be myself talking about the post of the week, (next heading will explain that) and discussing it further.  It’s also useful if you would rather listen than read. Can I keep up this ridiculous idea? Am I really that crazy to stress myself out even more? This year is going to be a lot harder than last year, and I was dying last year with time limits and such… Ah, I can sense the stress creeping up already.  This series will be very different to usual videos I’ve been taunting people with for the past 3 years on YouTube, so I’ll probably lose that fan base… yeah, 4 people, I think I can handle that. [It’s actually 120 odd, they must be alien like me.] So hopefully you’ll tune in here and enjoy the series every week throughout 2012. This podcast/show will start on the last week of February, possibly sooner!

Post-letics

Well that didn’t really work, it’s meant to mean Post-letics as in Posting and athletics together, so that it’s almost like a sport. The spell check just came up and told me that I meant “Prosthetic.”  What I mean by ‘Prosthetics’ is that I’ll now be posting more regularly, once a week in fact. Sometimes there might be more than one post a week, if I’m feeling extremely argumentative. These posts will all be about 500 words+, so reasonably short, yet still a bit of a read. They’re about half the length of this post. I feel that I will definitely have a few complaints with this one, something tells me I won’t be able to keep up, so, if that is the case, just shhhhh.

Author Resources 2.0

The Author Resources page was a measly attempt at helping authors of Ben-A-Ball write posts, and since it was created the site has changed so much that the stuff that’s on there doesn’t really work anymore. SO! The Author Resources page has been revamped to help out Authors in a more clean, informative and useful manner. Yeah, yeah, so at the moment it doesn’t look as flash, it’s more like a downgrade, but who cares! Off you go Authors! Get cracking!

Eycon – USB Customiser 2.0

What’s this? If you haven’t heard of it, Eycon – USB Customiser is one of my programs, and it’s recently received a fantastic makeover along with bug fixes, tweaks, enhancements, and a built-in icon gallery for those that can’t be bothered searching the web for an icon. The next program I have to finish off is Scribble’s Notepad 2 as well, so that’s coming some time this year I hope.

SO! There we go! A list of things to come, things that are coming, things that are already here and meh…

It’s going to be an exhausting 2012!

I have had the worse morning in terms of technology being an absolute pain in the motherboard.

Luckily my father locked his tool shed, otherwise I would be halfway through pounding this “Fast and Efficient” Personal Computer liar into millions of pieces. If you’re a PC fan boy, you can get stuffed, I don’t care if you want to argue some point about my computer being “outdated and slow”, [a typical PC Fan response, it seems that even a new computer purchased in 2011 is “outdated and slow”, what carp.] if you’re a Mac fan boy, you can bugger off as well, because in my experience iDevices screw up a lot too.

First things first, out of the blue, my computer decides that it no longer likes USB devices, yesterday it suddenly started this routine where it will NOT boot up unless I remove every USB device, then wait for it to load the operating system, then plug them all back in again. Then I have to log in using the on-screen keyboard so that the operating system can install all of the devices again, despite the fact it already has them installed. If I plug-in a device that’s already installed, into a different port on the computer, it’s apparently a foreign, new, device. So we have to go back and install all of the drivers for it again. It’s a complete waste of time.

Second thing, for some reason my server, this one, was serving an old version of my software “Eycon” to users, despite the fact I uploaded the new file. If I delete a file on my server, and upload a new file with the same name, the old file is shown, and not the new one. Bloody inconvenience.

Third thing, I purchased songs on my iPod Touch, I plugged it into my computer and synced it, it went straight through without copying the songs. It just finished the sync, and my songs hadn’t been transferred. I searched for the purchased songs in my library, they showed up grey – meaning they HADN’T been transferred. So I synced it a few more times, I even used the “Transfer Purchases” option, still the songs wouldn’t sync off my iPod Touch, so I have to go and download them again on my computer. When I go into the “Purchased” section of the iTunes Store, it tells me the songs have already been downloaded on this computer, when they haven’t. So it doesn’t let me download them.

Driving me nuts, how these systems are unpredictable, they suddenly, one day, even though they’ve done fine every single day without change, for some reason something screws up and they don’t work the same way anymore. It’s, to put it simply, crap.

I hate how when you post stuff like this you have some stuck up, delusional idiots telling you it’s because your system is outdated, or from some bad brand that no one should buy. No, it’s nothing to do with that. Every PC I’ve owned has done crap like this, I don’t do anything different, I haven’t installed any software that would do it. Just randomly, out of the blue, it stops working. Same with iDevices, apps have been crashing like crazy despite the fact I’m using the newest device, it’s just ridiculous, and yet, I’ll get some stupid fan boy expressing their opinion.

Till my next rant,

Ben

I had a pretty creepy dream last night, one which involved a lot of massively over sized spiders crawling all over the place and leaping on people and sticking their fangs into the people’s faces and… yeah all kind of affection. Why must my brain decide that spiders are better dream material than white fluffy bunny rabbits, or even the flying dream! I haven’t had the flying dream in a while, though I have had dreams recently where I can move things with my mind… perhaps some subliminal advertising from the makers of Chronicle.

Anyhow, with my creepy dream about large hairy spiders, *shiver* it took me completely by surprise to see a large, furry black thing clinging to the curtain in my bedroom when I woke up. It was ball-shaped and had two leg-like objects sticking out of it, I couldn’t identify it at all. I instantly assumed for the worst, expecting it to be a massive hairy spider-like the ones in my dreams, because I have in the past had a dream that my room had multiple huntsmen crawling all over the walls only to wake up and find that I DID IN FACT have multiple huntsmen climbing all over the walls. I can tell you, that was an incredibly… interesting… moment…

So there I was, sitting still in my bed staring up at this unidentified creature, my theory that it ‘must be a spider curled up into a ball’, wasn’t actually convincing me that much, because it certainly didn’t look like a spider, unless spiders had now figured out how to create their own sleeping bags. I called out to my father, who walked into the room, pausing for a moment, then saying, “What the French mustard is that?!”

Could it be some form of alien life?

No. After examining it further dad had it figured. “It’s a bat!” He said, and in reply to mum’s question, “Yes a bat, look.”

It was a baby bat, chilling in my bedroom. = O

In the end dad grabbed an old Pringle’s cylinder, a piece of cardboard, and carefully removed him from the curtain. It’s a well-known fact that bats carry a whole array of diseases, and this bat was definitely looking worse for wear. Whether that’s to do with him actually being sick or the fact he was awoken from his slumber by a man trying to force him into a cardboard cylinder I’m not sure. Probably a bit of both.

Anyways, dad brought him outside and placed him in the shade of our wood stack, bats actually are said to live in the hollows of trees, so we figured he’d be able to get the rest of his interrupted beauty sleep here. Later in the day I went to check up on him (or her) and it was gone. Who knows where the bat goes?

There was much debate about how he somehow managed to get inside without us noticing, and then entered my room at some point during the night.

All I can say is that next time I see a large black thing clung to my curtain, I’ll probably say, “Oh, another cute little bat,” then I’ll realise as it leaps onto my face with its hairy legs that I was wrong and it was in fact a massive hairy spider with a sleeping bag…

Until next time,

Ben,

The Betrayal

Awhile ago a friend of mine told me that I should get a Tumblr account. (If you’ve read my Tumblr post, this post will sound pretty familiar for a little while)

Call it boredom, but I have finally followed up on that suggestion, behold, I have a Tumblr account. Really not seeing why I even decided to create this account, due to the fact I already have a website where I write mind-boring blog posts about myself questioning, then re questioning myself… it’s all quite mental really, and now that I have a Tumblr (Drinking game, take a shot every time I say “Tumblr” =P) account I’ve basically just spread my insanity across two platforms. Three if you include my first blogging experience with Blogger.

[That’s part of the first post on my Tumblr account, I couldn’t be stuffed writing an explanation again.]

My Tumblr webpage obviously, is solely me, none of my brilliant benaball.com authors will be contributing their witty creative posts to it. The sad thing about this webpage is that it will probably run faster than my main website, because it has the backing of Tumblr’s many servers (If you don’t get tech stuff don’t even bother asking me to explain…), another sad thing is that it looks really nice and the final sad thing is that it’s far easier to post to Tumblr from my mobile devices and to write posts, than it is on my main website…

I’ve decided that Benaball will be for my bigger posts, VidLogs all the stuff I’ve already been using it for, and my Tumblr will be for little thoughts, snippets, quick photos and things like that. Chances are when school kicks back in I’ll end up abandoning both Tumblr and Benaball like I have in the past, meaning there won’t be any real frequency in posting…

Deary me, why did I bother typing tonight, I’m obviously not in the mood, I just feel so unstructured with my writing at the moment.

Anyways! So, I’ve got a Tumblr now you can follow and read if you’re interested, there, we good? No? Nevermind then, onto “the Post.”

The Post

When I was trying to write a clever quote on my new Tumblr page to show off my obviously super-natural intelligence, (…super-natural conceitedness) I ended up practically writing a post. I started a quote saying, “Imagination has no limits,[…]” then I foolishly added, “[…] or does it?” Gawd, why did you write that Ben? Surely I am aware that by writing that I would be sent into the paradox of my own questioning mentality.

I soon backspace’d my entire quote because it’d obviously grown far too large to be a quote, and decided to tell you here what I started mind bubbling about.

“Imagination has no limits, or does it?”

Does  imagination really have no limits? We say that with our imagination we can think of anything, picture anything, even sequence out in our minds how to kill, amputate and dismember the body parts of our enemies. It’s so ‘limitless’ that we feel as though we can say it’s unbound, it’s as large as space itself.

But what if our imagination is in fact limited? What if by instinct we can’t actually think of some things, but because we can’t think about it, we don’t know that it’s not there, and as I’ve said before, If we grow up with something being in our lives, we’ll see it as normal. (Imagine if you grew up and your eyes saw the colour blue as red, and the colour red as blue. You wouldn’t pick up on it at all, it would be completely normal to you because you grew up with it like that.) Could it be that out there somewhere in the universe there is a being that can imagine beyond what we can, perhaps their mind could be more advanced than ours… But we cannot imagine what things they’d be capable of imagining because, we’re not capable of imagining it! Call me mental and send me to the nearest ward, but it’s things like this that can make you incredibly confused. What are you’re thoughts on this?

Do you think that the imagination does in fact have its limits? I think it’s interesting that most the things we imagine aren’t truly original, they are often a modified version of something else we’ve already seen.

The Boredom

Boredom is probably the reason why I got a Tumblr account… although, I do have a lot to do. I have things to do, yet I’m putting them off, meaning that I’m bored until I eventually do them. I really am bored writing about boredom, and I’ve only written a line and a half… Gah, I’ll finish this post here.

Thanks for reading as always people.

Ben,

(P.S. This guy MUST become president! XD)