A Valentine Lament

Exactly 1 year ago, I had just flown back to England after spending a wonderful 3 months in JAX, Florida.

Newly engaged, my fiancée were forced to be apart for 5 months, endure soul-destroying examinations, interviews, and wait by the letterbox everyday, until my visa approval came through.

That’s all without mentioning the extortionate cost of every phase of the process.

Now, a year on, I’m so blessed to be spending Valentines Day holding my beautiful, heavily pregnant wife as she sleeps!

We were both so fortunate that my family were able to fly out to Florida for our wedding in October, last year. They fell in love with JAX, the Disney experience of Orlando, and of course, the weather!

We now have a wonderful house in North Florida, which we’ve been slowly decorating the last few months, gradually making it the warm, welcoming home we both dreamt about a year ago.

Going through a K1 visa application is hell.

Miles away, separated by continents, time zone differences, family & work pressures, time was redefined.

No longer did “I love you, speak tomorrow” have the same take-it-for-granted meaning.

Everyday was a challenge – a hurtful one – to try and meet on Skype to see each other briefly. Email, Twitter, and Facebook became our modern day tools for sending love letters.

Weekdays would mean little-to-no contact due to the 5 hour time difference. Weekends changed from offering nights out with the lads, to days & nights staring into a Skype window, discussing & planning our visa processing.

It kinda made us both into happy hermits. Something which I don’t think anybody can really understand, unless they’ve been through or are going through it.

An unexpected result of all of this, was my sobriety. I was drinking alcohol less. A lot less. My go-to drink was milk or an isotonic sports drink. I had started jogging again. paled into irrelevance.

I had also returned to playing video games heavily. A welcome distraction, i immersed myself in some amazing digital universes, avoiding the petty squabbles, repeated questions and negativity we received from certain people.

Video games also allowed my fiancée and I to spend quality time chatting, working together to complete goals, and strengthen our inseparable bond, which was being tested daily.

On this day given over to the awful commercialism of Valentine’s Day, I think about all that we have been through in the last two years of knowing each other.

It’s not the expensive chocolates, wildly flamboyant array of bouquets, or fine dining at prestigious restaurants that cement our relationship.

It’s our hearts. Our kisses. The gentle shocks as our hands brush past each the other’s. It’s our lusty glances across the room. It’s our shared desires, our differing views and our mutual love.

Most of all, it’s our unwavering desire to be – and remain – together until our last heartbeat, that makes our relationship and all of the pain worth enduring.

So, I thank you God, our families & close friends for all of your support; then, now, and still to come, through our difficult journey.

To my beautiful wife, and baby boy, I love you so much, now and always. You break my heart in the happiest way everyday I wake up beside you.

To the world, I say: chase your dreams.

It’s the only way you will be able to ever live them!

iPhoneography

A week or so ago, I was just relaxing, checking Twitter, and saw two great posts made by two different people on my stream.  The “WOW-factor” to these tweets came in the link mentioned, which directed off to a photograph.

Both of the images were snapped on an iPhone, uploaded to Instagram, and published to Twitter.

The images were amazing, and had some great effects applied to them, to make them even more artistic.

Now, I don’t have an iPhone, but using my wife’s iPad2, I downloaded the iOS-only app Instagram, and set straight to work in playing around with it.  I had become totally inspired by these two photos I had seen on Twitter.

You can check out my work here: MrLoxy on Tumblr

Instagram is a great application, allowing for many post-snapped filters to be applied, geo-tagging, trend #tags, and full publishing to a wealth of social networking sites.

Additionally, I also have downloaded & recommend the following (FREE) photo-editing apps:

• ColorEffect
• iColorama (LITE)
• PSexpress

I’m so amazed at these apps – all free – and the end results I’ve achieved…and I’m a self-confessed novice of photography and art.

Now, if only I had an iPhone…

LINKS:

ColorEffect on iTunes
iColorama (LITE) on iTunes
Instagram on iTunes
PSexpress on iTunes

TMD : the Monkey Dogs

In December 2012, I formed a new video games team with a group of people I’d been regularly playing Gears of War 3.

Some of these guys were friends I’d made from the days of LoXgamers, the other guys were the people behind the Final Level Games website & podcast, to which I contribute.

My ethos for the team was simple: “play for fun; play fair“.

The most difficult part of forming the team, was coming up with a suitable name. After days of thinking about it, a game of Beast in Gears 3 provided the solution – we would be called:

TMD : the Monkey Dogs!

The inspiration for the name came from the Locust characters in Gears 3, called Wretches…their nickname; Monkey Dogs.

It seemed to fit our group perfectly.

In early January, I set to the task of creating a Facebook, GooglePlus and Twitter profile for our team, as well as a community forum site.

Please feel free to check out our profiles, join us online (mostly Xbox LIVE), and let us know your thoughts on gaming & tech!

TMD profiles:

• TMD on Facebook
• TMD on GooglePlus
• TMD on Twitter
• TMD community forums

WP7 : Error Code 80150101

I have a HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7.  I love being able to play Xbox Live games on the go.

This morning, I open up the Xbox Live tile, and watch the familiar sloooooooooow “Updating… … …” message at top-left of screen, as the games list is refreshed.

I swipe across to my avatar screen to review which achievements I’m going to try & attain today, so I press and hold on my avatar, hit the “refresh” option (this should auto-refresh & notify…sys-update pls..?!) and receive the following message:

“We’re having a problem with the Xbox Live service or your connection. Try again later. Error code: 80150101 [close]“

I exit the Xbox Live app, check my WiFi & 3G connection, check my home router, and check that I can sign in to XBL on my Xbox console.

All working fine.  All other WiFi / data services on my phone are fine.  I am currently browsing my 360 Dashboard connected to XBL fine.

I restart the phone.  Same error message.  I press my avatar, to launch the Xbox Live Extras app to review my achievements, messages etc.  I receive this message:

“Could not sign in to Xbox LIVE. Please ensure airplane mode is off, you still have a cellular data or Wi-Fi connection, and your account settings are up to date. [ok]“

I recheck all connections, router, phone, WindowsLive ID settings etc – the full 9-yards.  All working perfectly with other systems, devices, apps & services.

I have searched the internet using Bing & Google for answers to this, and everything points to an issue with Zune/XBL MarketPlace license issues.  All posts dated Nov/Dec 2010.

I was playing Flowerz, viewing & replying to messages yesterday on my Windows Phone 7 perfectly fine.  I go to sleep.  I wake up.  I launch XboxLive for WP7 and receive this problem.  I have not downloaded, purchased, installed etc any apps, games, services from Zune/XBL MarketPlace.  I have not changed my WLID login/password.

Can anybody please advise a reason, and solution? (thanks in advance)

.reboot

Ladies and gentlemen, gamers and g33k5, you may already have spotted the change, but over the next few weeks, there will be significant updates to this blog.

The first few changes have already been made:

- my gamertag is now Mr Loxy
- my twitter account is now @MrLoxy

…and there’s a rumour circling that a certain gaming team may be rising from the ashes…