Happy 6th Birthday Three NInjas

Well technically The Three Ninjas in its current format celebrated its second birthday on 12th January, but the Livejournal which started it all off, and who’s posts were exported onto here is six years old today.

Sit tight dear reader while I give you the brief history of how we came about, and why were are celebrating today!

19th May 2005:

A couple of us in the office created LiveJournal accounts so we could keep up with what our friends were doing, and so we could post random gibbering’s online during the slower parts of the day to try and keep us sane. My account was under the name penddraig, and the first ever post I made can be found here entitled “First Entry

Our posts covered mostly the insanity of work, random thoughts & meme’s, and what we had been up too. Including a few funny themed posts like the “ICE phone scam“. Our little community grew with some constant interactions and comments from the same group of people.

8th January 2009:

With the sell off of LiveJournal to a Russian businessman, and the reported rumours it was closing down  reported here in “Livejournal” (Plus the niggling voice telling me as an IT person I should have my own hosted blog) I decided to start my own self-hosted Blog using WordPress as the core system. I therefore set up wordpress, imported all my old LiveJournal posts into the new Blog and was up running.

12th January 2009:

Before I’d even finished setting up my blog, a friend from the old LiveJournal days expressed an interest in moving away as well. After a beer fuelled discussion, we decided to have a group or community blog. So After much discussion we settled on a domain name, and the Three Ninjas blog became a reality.

So without that original set of LJ posts, this blog would never have been here. So please take a minute to wish us (and GothNinja in particular) a Happy Blog Birthday.

Happy Birthday to us!

The Cake is not always a lie!

MEME: The Year That Was 2010

Several years ago, in the days when planetpete used to be a fellow inmate of the Insane Asylum.  When the insane laughter and gibbering’s could be heard coming from the development cell, and all was well in the world (ish). We had a tradition of doing “The Year that was ????” MEME and posting the results on LiveJournal. This year we have decided to re-introduce the festive tradition, and end the year with a look back at the Year that was.

MEME: The Year That Was 2010 (more…)

National Nostalgia Week

Is it “National Nostalgia Week” or something?
Is there such an event?
If so, Why was I not informed?
If there is, how would the organisers control peoples memories?
If you have bad remembrances can you get a refund?

These and other pointless questions will not be answered in this post. It does make you think though, if today is INTERNATIONAL CAPSLOCK DAY, and people celebrate the annoying use of shoutyness in correspondence, is “National Nostalgia Week” such a insane suggestion? But I digress, I know its an uncommon thing for me to go slightly off-topic but that’s what I seem to have done here.

The concept of “National Nostalgia Week” has come about because this week seems to be a collection of things reminding me of days gone by, basically a string of nostalgic memories for bygone days. Let me share a few here for you dear reader.

(more…)

Missing Person: My Muse

I would like to report a missing person.

Well to be more accurate I would like to report a missing Anthropomorphic personification of an idea. (Try saying that when your drunk). Basically my muse has gone missing, and I would like to find her again.

Yes, My muse is female. Its my imagination, my story, and I intend to entertain myself. So for you my dear reader to keep up to speed just imagine Selma Hayek as the Muse Serendipity in Dogma, and we are up to speed. “Oh wait a second. Best imagine her naked offering beer!

I started this Blog many years ago (When it was on LiveJournal) in an attempt to entertain myself in work, and to try and get back into the habit of writing so that I could be more creative and kill the apathy I had got myself into.  Which it did help with a lot.  Only for the last week, I have had complete writers block on anything to write.

My mind is blank of ideas, which is a scary thought as my brain never ever shuts up. It talks 24/7, if I want it to or not. So for it to go silent on ideas is a bit weird.

So if anyone sees my muse, can you please send her home.

Many Thanks

GN

Weekend Wanderings

This weekend was a throwback to the early days of this blog.  In fact before this blog even existed, back when the halls of livejournal echoed with the insane ramblings of the staff at the Insane Asylum, When “The Mentalist” was a code word for “I need Help” and not the name of a rather good TV show, When most solutions could be found after the call of “Quick! to the Venn Diagram”, way back when…..

I had an appointment to meet up with planetpete that was several months in the organising. Well The original meet up date had been several months ago, but due to one thing and another, and general crapness of blokes to organise things it had taken months to come to happen, but happen it did. The plan was simple. “Meet at a pub half way between his & mine at 8:30″.  The simple plans are often the best.

So I spend the afternoon being very productive, teaching my 11yr old niece to play Fable II for me and work as blacksmith/woodcutter to make me lots of money.  And at about 4ish get a text from MrAx saying he was up in the area for a one night flyover and was anything going on. “Hey, kill two birds with one stone!” So I dragged him along with me to the meeting (It helped he offered to drive so I could drink).

The night started interestingly. 1st We got lost. Well not really lost just diverted by a closed roundabout, then drove round in circles on the longest trip to cover the shortest distance as my directions were ignored. 2nd When we got to the pub, MrAx decided to drive into a low stone wall, breaking the top stone off. 3rd The original drinks we ordered were canceled as they barrel ran out (after barmaid had filled two pint glasses with foam).

Luckily things picked up from there. The replacement drinks were a very nice ale suggested by the nice barmaid. Planetpete and nellsworld turned up, and much random junk was talked, interrupted occasional by nellsworlds titters and exclamations of “Those cows are getting it On!”  More drinks followed, then it was time to say goodbye and head back into Wrexham for more drinks, and live music.

The Music was BAD, very very BAD. So the plans changed into a wander around the pubs of Wrexham trying to find one playing rock music. This was an impossible task, which did lead to one interesting moment as I bumped into my eldest nephew who was wandering about in bright red shorts, and a very yellow t-shirt on.  Who then spent ages trying to explain he was not dressed like that because he wanted to, but was out on his girlfriends 18th birthday night out and they were all dressed as lifeguards. I think he had been drinking lots, as he had already told me this plan earlier in the day when i saw him.

The quest for a pub playing decent music, or no music at all failed, the plans changed to drinking at mine while watching “Lesbian Vampire Killers“..

Much reminiscing, old sk00l quotes and jokes, and mentions of old friends….

Final Words

So dear readers, consider the good old days of your life, and try to keep in touch with old friends.  Its easier to let friendships slip away in these busy days, but the effort in keeping them pays back a million times more.

Livejournal

livejournal_logo

I was reading on t’interweb about the Russian owners of Livejournal laying off most of its staff without any severance packages, and since all of these people are in the technical area, leaving only sales people left its a bit of an interesting time.

So being a IT person and therefore a BIG advocate of   decided I better back up my data. For those of you interested in such things, or wishing to back up your own data i suggest a program called ljarchive.  It is a good idea as you may have years worth of memories you may loose.

Now, I sat there with my back up of several years of pointless drivel from Livejournal, and my shiny new blog V2, in two different windows on my Laptop, when insperation hit. Where better to store a backup of my old blog, but in the archives of the new blog?

So, quick import of data from the ljarchive file, a tweak on posting info, and bob’s your great uncle.  And this blog suddenly backdates several years.