So, Agent J is turning 9 years bold on Monday! He started guitar lessons last year and has quite taken to it, passing his grade 1 a few months ago over Zoom -- ah, the modern world! Since his teacher is running Zoom lessons 4 or 5 times a week I decided to get him a second guitar that can be at my house for when he is with me. His current nylon string 1/2 size is due an upgrade i think, so today I went into Belfast and came home with a 3/4 size with steel strings so that it

This summer we holidayed at a log cabin at the side of Lough Allen in County Leitrim. More of a wooden "chalet" than a log cabin in my...

In the last post you might have noticed a humble black rubbish bin has been added to the street corner... Physically modelled scenary The...

So it's mid September and I've been exploring options for building the game environment. I've been weighing up the alternatives of using...

Decided that Player 1 - "AgentK" could be more comedy. We re-recorded the green screen videos with a new blue-wig character that would...

So i've begun to replace the red and black stick man animations with the real ones. So far just added the 'idle' cycles and the left and...

This is the first post about the new game we’ve started developing “The Streets Of Belfast!” (SOB) The game is to be a 2.5D...

So this weekend I arranged with a friend to take our canoe and new white and blue second-hand sail boat out for a trial run at the lake in Castlewellan Forest Park. Weather forecast was a bit iffy - thunder and lightning being predicted in some parts of the province. And, very little wind. Which is not a good thing for a sail boat! This time I was prepared and brought my dry bag for valuables including mobile phone so that I could grab some pics. Here they are...

Two weekends ago I had a quick test to see if we could get the canoe onto the car. Canoe balanced on inflatable roof-bars. Dangerous driver! It just fits. It is a two-person job due to the awkward size of it. With the two kids helping to steady the ends I'm just able to get it up on to my head/shoulders and then onto the roof. However, the weather deteriorated and so we didn't get to try it. The following weekend was great weather so we took it to the local river and it go

I took this picture of a monkey in the road when I was on a local bus in Sri Lanka a few years ago... I started using it as an avatar on my profile for chess.com and quite liked it - since the monkey looked like it was thinking! I recently thought it would be a good replacement for the cat logo for all the reasons mentioned in the previous post - and - because it looks like it it thinking which is great for a website devoted to games about solving problems or challenges. Here

Back from Dublin it was time to add the runners to the underside of the hull. The runners were attached to the hull with a layer of...

I like pictures in the house to have a story to explain their presence. For example i have this picture in my lounge next to the fire place of a woman's face in negative. I really like it from a purely visual point of view, but I've no idea who it is... But who is she? I'd been wanting to replace it with a woman who I find inspiring and had been considering Hedy Lamarr due to her inventions but the more i found out about the post-Holywood side of things the less inspired i b

Painting is a good way to get extended conversation with the kids, flick paint at each other and do silly stuff. Agent K is already quite handy with a pencil or paint brush being a bit older than Agent J. So one breakfast we decided to have a collaboration between daddy and Agent J. I showed them a handy trick that i'd just learned for making a grid to scale up a picture in a book to a big canvas without the need for measuring anything. Agent J selected the picture from a

There's 'making your bed' and then there's actually making your own bed from wood, glue, screws and hard work... Step 1 get the kids to help you create a mock-up using lollipop sticks to explore what might work and how strong/weak the frame shapes are... 6 legged bed frame. The idea of the six-legged frame was to maximise unhindered space beneath it. It did seem a bit risky though! So we took the safer option and opted for making two identical frames with four legs. This h

I found a drop-leaf table that fitted in the space beside the chimney breast in my lounge and also opened large enough to serve as a dining table occasionally for up to 6 people and more typically serve as a general work surface for making stuff with the kids.. Here's what it looked like when i got it from Gumtree... And i got the idea of painting it bright lime green or like a zebra. I looked online for zebra ideas and found this picture which i took as inspiration... From

Spring has arrived at last. It's Easter weekend and it's 21 degrees. Canoe building time! The job I've not been relishing -- fitting...

With the weather worsening, the wind blowing the canoe off its stand, the constant rains and temperature dropping i had to get one last...

Last time I had fitted the inwales to help stiffen the rim of the hull and keep it's shape better. The internal seams had also been...

All the seams on the exterior have been filled and I’ve now made a start on the walings as shown above. The inner walings are glued and...

Have at last filled all the cracks between planks, inside and out. It’s made quite a mess as you can see. I’m toying with the idea of...