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Blog: The Life Of A Supreme Ruler
Foxamp 0.3.12 released
Filed under: — orudge @ 15/01/2011 1:09 pm
So, it turns out that Firefox 4.0 hasn’t actually broken Foxamp as much as I thought, and I’ve now released a new version with support for Firefox 4.0. Click here to download it, or if you’re already a Foxamp user, you should receive an update notification through the Mozilla add-ons service soon.
Happy new year!
Filed under: — orudge @ 09/01/2011 2:35 pm
A happy new year to you all, and with a new year comes a new update! Nothing much, admittedly, but a few new links on the links page, and a couple of small updates elsewhere. Enjoy!
Belated update
Filed under: — orudge @ 04/12/2010 3:00 pm
As usual, I’ve been rather busy lately, and neglecting this site. Sorry! I even missed owenrudge.net’s 11th birthday, which happened on the 28th of November. (I was somewhat busy flying across the Atlantic that day, not helped by all the snow in Scotland at the time!)
I in theory should have a new version of Foxamp, compatible with Firefox 4.0, at some point in the near future. Other than that, I will try to post a blog with a bit more of an update sometime in the near future, but I have another traversal of the Atlantic next weekend, before settling down for Christmas in the UK. 🙂
Catch you in another few months…
EDIT: Ugh, after having just installed the latest Firefox beta to play around with, I’m really, really, not liking the UI changes they’ve made. Looks like there may be quite a bit of work to update Foxamp, too, and I’m in no rush to do that with this horrible new UI. Inevitably I’ll have to migrate eventually, I suppose. I do wish people would stop messing up perfectly good UIs, or at least removing the options that allow old UI features to continue to be used (e.g., completely removing the status bar in Firefox 4.0; removing the classic Start menu in Windows 7; the entire UI in Office 2007/2010 – which, admittedly, I do find to be quite handy for most things now that I’ve got used to it, but it can still be a puzzle to find some random old command I use once in a blue moon, but I digress.) But anyway…
Ten years of Owen’s Transport Tycoon Station!
Filed under: — orudge @ 05/09/2010 2:11 am
Well, ten and a bit years ago, my Transport Tycoon Station was launched! (The anniversary was actually in July, but I’ve been a bit busy lately and didn’t notice, I’m afraid.) Since then, the site has grown enormously, with the development of several useful Transport Tycoon utilities, a comprehensive strategy guide and reference, saved games and scenarios, and, of course, The Transport Tycoon Forums, which originated as an offshoot of the site. The Transport Tycoon “scene” has also changed significantly, with the rise of TTDPatch in the early 2000s, and then the creation, release and further development of OpenTTD in the second half of the decade. Will we still be playing Transport Tycoon in 2020? I’ve no doubt the game will live on, and I’m sure the Transport Tycoon Station will still be here then too. And who knows, maybe I’ll have even finished the new Repository by then! 😉
EDIT: And, as a little tenth birthday present, I’ve updated some of the pages on the site, and even finished a couple of those pages that weren’t yet finished. Enjoy!
A busy bee…
Filed under: — orudge @ 31/08/2010 1:55 am
… is what I’ve been lately. Quite a lot has happened since my last blog entry – I was back in the UK for about a month, seeing Olivia, who is doing really well. She’d grown a huge amount since I was last there, and is now incredibly aware and active and just itching to start moving around a bit more! She’s been teething for a while now, which has sadly been bothering her; hopefully her teeth will come through soon and stop bothering her so much. And I’m sure that it won’t be long now until she’s crawling (or even more) – no doubt the fun will really start then! I’ll be back in the UK for a bit in November, and then, as many of you know, I will be moving back for the foreseeable future come December, to be significantly closer to Olivia than I am at the moment. So there’s lots to look forward to, and lots to sort out as I get the fun of another transatlantic move to organise!
For the moment, though, I’m back in Minneapolis, where it is currently quite hot. We’ve not yet moved into our new office, but we should, fingers crossed, be doing that next week! It’s also the Minnesota State Fair this week, so that should be fun to go and have a look around. Nothing else going on that’s too exciting at the moment (I spent most of the weekend doing accounts – fun, eh?). Just keeping busy, as is usual.
Well, I’d best go and stick some washing in the dryer, and then I shall watch some Angel, which I am slowly working my way through after my Buffy marathon this time last year (well, it took me 6 months to watch it all, so perhaps “marathon” isn’t the term, but it was quicker than taking 7 years to watch it all I guess!). Catch you later, peeps.
Yes, I’m still alive!
Filed under: — orudge @ 26/06/2010 6:44 pm
I haven’t blogged in ages, I know – things have been a bit busy lately! I headed back to the US in April, and have been enjoying the Minnesota summer (except when it’s been far too hot). Just a few weeks now until I head back to the UK for a month or so – lots of travelling this year! But anyway, at some point between now and then, I shall write a more extensive blog! Promise!
Foxamp 0.3.11 released
Filed under: — orudge @ 09/04/2010 1:26 am
I have released a new version of Foxamp. Foxamp 0.3.11 adds support for Firefox 3.6. Apologies for the delay with getting this released – it’s been a busy couple of months!
A busy few weeks!
Filed under: — orudge @ 17/03/2010 5:04 pm
Sorry for the lack of the updates on the blog – as one might imagine, it’s been a busy few weeks! I don’t think I actually even announced that we’d named our daughter on this blog – we decided on the name Olivia, her full name being Olivia Grace Rudge Littlejohn. There are some photos up here. She’s been doing really well – very active and aware, and growing far too quickly! Things have been quite hectic though, so hopefully they’ll be settling down a bit now. I’ll be heading back to the US at the start of April, for a few months – I shall certainly miss people here though, but I’ll be keeping in regular contact! I will hopefully post a more substantial blog in a while when I have a bit more time, but whether by then I’ll be on this side of the ocean or the other I’m not sure! My Twitter tends to get updated a bit more frequently, so you can always follow me there!
An announcement, part two
Filed under: — orudge @ 28/02/2010 10:55 pm
For those of you who haven’t seen my Facebook or Twitter pages, I became a father yesterday! Jen gave birth to a beautiful baby girl at 7.38am yesterday. She came out as 8 lb and 13 oz, and is quite long! We haven’t decided on a name yet, but I will of course post when we do.
Would write more, but as one might imagine, we’ve had a bit of a busy weekend! Shall provide a further update – and a name! – in the coming days. 🙂
A long-awaited update
Filed under: — orudge @ 11/01/2010 6:04 pm
Well, I’ve intended to write a new blog since October, but have found myself rather busy and until now, didn’t quite get around to doing so. I’m now sitting on a flight back to Minneapolis after my trip to Tahoe, listening to air traffic control on Channel 9. (First United flight I’ve been on in ages which has had Channel 9 enabled!) So it seems like a good time to write this. No doubt you’re all wondering what’s been going on in my life recently, so here goes!
As you probably know, I’m now living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, having moved here in early October. I’ve been settling in pretty well, and am enjoying it so far. Living in a large house in a nice part of the city, quite close to everything, which is handy. Plus the famous Minnesota winter has so far been reasonably tolerable for me. Lots of snow recently, and I think the lowest temperature I’ve experienced is about -25°C. It’s funny how quickly you get used to it though – -5°C now seems pretty warm to me! Of course, the downside it seems is that the Minnesotan winter drags on until about April, but luckily for me I’ll be skipping most of it – more on that later!
Anyway, yes, so far I have been enjoying Minneapolis, and work – it’s good being in the office with everyone else, and not just for the free doughnuts on company meeting day. 😉 My first few months have seen various interesting things happen, some of which I shall try to recount here, if I can remember them all! I experienced Halloween American-style, becoming the character of Shaun from Shaun of the Dead (made more convincing by the fact I’m British, of course). There are some photos lurking around somewhere, so I’ll probably upload them eventually. A week or two later, most of the developers at CodeWeavers, myself included, were off to WineConf, which this year was in the Netherlands. It was pretty fun, although I was literally just there from Friday to Monday, so it was a very brief and jetlaggy weekend!
Other things that happened after that… hmm… well, there was my first Thanksgiving, which involved eating far too much food and attempting to understand an American football game. I think I preferred the Rock Band which later took place. I also attended my first ice hockey game, which was a college game between Duluth and Minnesota. Confusingly, of course, Duluth is in Minnesota, but the “Minnesota” team is basically the main Twin Cities team. Anyway, Duluth won, and we lost. 🙁 A fun game though, something I may well see some more of at some point. That same day we’d taken a tour of the Summit brewery, which is based in St Paul. One thing that did surprise me somewhat was the variety of nice beers available here – lots of microbreweries and the like. I guess I’d got too used to the cinematic version of American bars, which naturally only includes big names like Budweiser or Miller that pay for the product placement!
Speaking of beer, every week now my housemates and I have been partaking in a local pub quiz at the Leaning Tower of Pizza. Our team, which begun as “The Flying Scotsman” and went through a variety of names (typically with the word “flying” replaced with something that vaguely rhymes), has generally done reasonably well – some relatively bad weeks, and some pretty good weeks, with us coming 2nd or 3rd on a number of occasions. We alas haven’t yet come first at LT, but we did also try another quiz at a place called King’s, at which we have a 100% success ratio – we played there twice, and came first twice! We may have to return there again soon, clearly, to make it a hat trick!
Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving finally brought what was more or less the start of winter (this November was one of the mildest Novembers since records began, apparently!), with a load of snow falling in the first week of December, which generally stuck around. And December of course brought Christmas, and then New Year. Christmas was a relatively quiet affair for me, but I was quite content with a nice steak and the Doctor Who specials. Then, after New Year, I was off to Lake Tahoe for skiing, and to see Rachel again of course. The trip was pretty fun, with me getting a bit better at skiing (I can somewhat do parallel turns, it would seem). I also rented a car for a couple of days and took some trips into California, visiting Sacramento and the Apple Hill area, which is full of, as the name might suggest, apple-growers! Rachel and I also ended up going out to a town called Hawthorne, located in the middle of nowhere (relatively speaking) in Nevada. This actually provided a quite enjoyable trip, with an interesting drive there along some scenery which was partially quite spectacular, and partially rather dull. Speaking of spectacular scenery, my flight from Reno – Denver was one of the first flights I’ve been on in the continental US where I’ve been in a window seat (most of my long-distance flights I prefer aisle seats), and I noticed just how massive and, well, spectacular the Rocky Mountains are. Alas, I didn’t get any photos, but it certainly made for an interesting view. All in all, a fun week. I shall be uploading photos from the trip as a whole probably in the next week or two, as and when I have some time.
Speaking of next week (well, tomorrow), we have a big CodeWeavers company meeting here in St Paul. I’m not quite sure how we’re going to cram everybody into the office, but thankfully we do have a conference room hired for most of our meetings and the like, I believe!
Anyway, the week after next, I’m heading back to the UK! As I’m sure you all remember from my previous blog post, I’m going to become a father in about 5 weeks, so I’m heading back a week on Thursday, and shall be heading up to Scotland soon after that. One of the benefits of my job is that I can work remotely during the few months I’ll be staying in the UK, so that is at least handy. I will return to the US in April, but for how long I’m not currently sure. Either way, it’s all very exciting – really not long at all to go now!
Right, well, there are probably other things I’ve forgotten about that I should have mentioned, but we’re approaching MSP, so I should turn off the ol’ computer. Hopefully I’ll be able to post another blog a bit more quickly than I did this one!
(Of course, I wasn’t able to post this blog on the plane, so for “now” read “last night”.)
Happy new year!
Filed under: — orudge @ 01/01/2010 12:13 am
Just a quick message to wish all visitors to my site a very happy new year. 🙂
An update coming soon, promise!
Filed under: — orudge @ 31/12/2009 10:00 pm
I’ve been meaning to post a new blog for a couple of months now, and I really will. Just not quite yet. I’ve got a 4 hour flight on Saturday, maybe I’ll write something up then (assuming these silly new security rules don’t mean I can’t use my laptop or something…)
Until then, hope you all had a merry Christmas, and have a happy new year!
10 years of owenrudge.net!
Filed under: — orudge @ 28/11/2009 7:32 am
Well, to be more precise, 10 years of Owen’s Visual Basic Workshop, which then evolved into the site you see before you. It was the 28th of November 1999 when I launched my first web site, and it’s grown significantly since then! I’ll hopefully post a new blog later today (I’ve been meaning to post on for over a month now, but been quite busy), and shall likely comment on the anniversary later on.
In the mean time, here’s to another ten years!
An announcement
Filed under: — orudge @ 24/09/2009 8:44 pm
It’s been a while since I last made a post here. Quite a lot has been going on! Indeed, I think my last proper blog was when I was in Brazil – which was lovely. Since then I’ve pretty much just been working. Anyway, the main reason for this post: I have a couple of announcements to make.
Firstly, as many of you will know anyway, I’m moving to Minnesota next month. I’ve been working remotely for CodeWeavers as a software developer for the past month and a bit now, which has been going quite well. The work is challenging, for sure, but it is generally enjoyable! Back in June, we applied for an H-1B visa for me, which would allow me to move to the US. The petition was finally approved last week, and on Tuesday I went down to London for my interview at the US embassy on Wednesday. The interview was very brief, and the visa was approved! And today I got a message telling me that my passport would be delivered back to me tomorrow! So I’ve booked my flights now for the 13th of October, giving me about three weeks to get ready. It’s going to be a hectic few weeks, that’s for sure. Lots to pack, lots to get rid of, lots to generally sort out. But it should be a fantastic experience!
And now the other news, which is perhaps more significant. I’m going to become a father in February! This will probably come a bit of a surprise to many of you – it did to both of us when we found out, but both Jen and I are really very excited about it! Such a major change is of course going to have an effect on me going to the US, but I’ll be returning regularly. Four months to go… it’ll be hard work, but it’ll all be worth it. 🙂
It’s going to be an exciting few months, for sure.
Foxamp 0.3.10 released
Filed under: — orudge @ 26/08/2009 12:17 pm
A minor update to Foxamp has been released. Version 0.3.10 fixes an annoying bug whereby Foxamp would display a “Winamp is not running” message every 5 seconds if Winamp was indeed not running and Foxamp was unable to start it. If your Firefox is set to automatically check for updates, it should receive the update shortly – if not, you can manually download it here.
Owen’s Locomotion Depot launched!
Filed under: — orudge @ 07/08/2009 1:36 pm
Yes, just five years after Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion was released, my new Locomotion site has launched! To be more specific, I have taken over the site from Stephen Brandwood, who hadn’t the time to maintain it, and relaunched it. The site’s content has been updated, the design improved, and I intend to provide more updates when I can in the future. If you have any comments or queries on the new site, please get in touch!
Announcing the new Locomotion Depot
Filed under: — orudge @ 9:00 am
Welcome to the newly relaunched Owen’s Locomotion Depot! I have taken over this site from Stephen Brandwood, and relaunched it. The site’s content has been updated, the design improved, and I intend to provide more updates when I can in the future. If you have any comments or queries on the new site, please do contact me.
Foxamp 0.3.9 released
Filed under: — orudge @ 06/08/2009 3:39 pm
I have released an update to Foxamp. Foxamp 0.3.9 adds support for Firefox 3.5, so if you’ve upgraded Firefox, you’ll want to install the new version.
A busy month
Filed under: — orudge @ 31/07/2009 8:54 pm
Well, it has indeed been a busy month, and one in which I have spent surprisingly little time in the UK – a little over 24 hours, really. At the start of the month, I went to Vienna to see Silvia for a few days, and much fun was had. Photos will follow at a later date, once I am back in the UK. And then, the day after heading there, I was back at Manchester Airport to fly out to Frankfurt, where I would then catch a flight down to São Paulo, from where I would finally get a flight up to Jõao Pessoa to see Dad. I’ve been in Brazil since then, and will be heading back to the UK on Sunday (arriving back on Monday). Lots of flying, for sure – some 17,000 miles or so by the time I get back to Manchester on Monday!
So what have I been up to in Brazil? Relaxing and enjoying things mainly. Been down to the beach quite often, out for a swim and then back for a couple of beers. Went out on a boat to the reef last week, which was quite pleasant – got a bit sunburnt though, which was not. Generally, taking things easy – I start work soon, so this was probably the last chance I’d get to head somewhere for a “long” holiday. Again, photos will follow when I get home.
In other news, the updated Locomotion Depot should be launching soon – hopefully later next week. The new site will integrate better with my existing Transport Tycoon Station, and with the future Saved Game Repository (which, yes, is still under what might be considered “eternal development” ;)). And of course, next Saturday it’s the third annual Transport Tycoon Forums meet, this time in York, which should prove to be interesting!
Right, well, that’s me for now, I think. See you back in the UK!
Packing away…
Filed under: — orudge @ 28/06/2009 1:53 pm
Well, I think I’ve meant to write this blog for about a month – things have been a bit busy since then! The main news, of course, is that I am now Mr Owen Rudge BSc (Hons) (St And). It was my graduation this Wednesday past, and a pretty good day it was, too. The weather, while foggy at first, brightened up and was really quite nice by the end of the day. I’ll stick some photos up when I have time. Then on Friday, it was the Graduation Ball – the final social event of the year. It was nice to see everybody one last time, although of course it’s not going to the case that I’ll never see anybody again (and you’re all quite welcome to visit me in Minnesota come October :P). Since then it’s been a case of packing and tidying, which I am taking a bit of a break from just now.
Before this past week, I also had a trip up to Banchory to see Jen, where we also went to visit Balmoral – all quite fun. Photos will again follow at some point. I then spent a few days in Inverness with Ann and Graeme, before returning down to St Andrews again. And before that week, well, I can’t quite remember any more. Lots has gone on, anyway.
Lots will be going on in the near future, too. Tomorrow I’ll be heading down to North Wales with all my stuff, dropping Silvia off at Edinburgh Airport on the way. Hopefully I’ll be able to fit everything in the car so I only have to do one trip, but it’s possible I may then have to head back up to St Andrews, and drive down again on Tuesday to take the last of my stuff. We shall see. Then on Wednesday, I’m off to Vienna for a few days, visiting Silvia, before heading back to the UK for all of a day on Sunday, before departing for Brazil on Monday for a month! All a bit mad, really.
Then come August I shall be starting my new job with CodeWeavers, remotely until October when hopefully, pending the approval of my H1-B visa, I will be moving out to the US. So lots to be sorted out and organised.
The past four years have been fantastic, for sure, and quite the experience. But now new horizons beckon, and the future looks bright.