Photos: Special delivery: Your house in a box | CNET News.com
August 30th, 2007
Hannah Stouffer
May 23rd, 2007
Stouffer is a San Fransisco based graphic artist - I’ve put this up less for my research, and more because there is some great work here, hope she doesn’t mind me using the image. . .
Andy Hunt & Kenny Rogers
May 9th, 2007Hell Yeah!!!
April 24th, 2007info on producing 3D images in photoshop
April 24th, 2007Photos: Tiny movie projector fits in a phone | CNET News.com
April 24th, 2007Finally the laser projectors are starting to make an appearance - Photos: Tiny movie projector fits in a phone | CNET News.com
Pure Genius
February 16th, 2007First trials with HDR
February 14th, 2007
Been looking at HDR for a while. Not sure it’s got a lot to do with my work at the mo - but it sure does look purrdy! (Kinda wish I’d looked at it before I went to India)
Technorati Tags: art, Flickr, gadget, photography
Le Grand Voyage a film by Ismaël Ferroukhi
February 14th, 2007As part of a series of six films chosen and shown by students over the next six weeks, I saw Le Grand Voyage a film by Ismaël Ferroukhi on Monday night.
I’ll start by saying that I was very impressed.
Plot Outline: Reda, a young French-Moroccan guy and his old father drive from the south of France to Mecca in order for the father to do his pilgrimage. At first distant, they gradually learn to know each other.
Taken from IMDB: Le Grand Voyage
This film was so engaging because the complexities of the relationship between the father and the son, and the cultural divides they represented, were never dealt with simplistically or glibly. The viewer was allowed to bring their own interpretation to the relationship, it’s difficulties and differences. This was reinforced by the way that a lot of the action was only hinted at: After demanding meat, Reda’s father has the car stopped near a group of settlers and tells Reda to bring his (brothers) camera. Cut to the next scene - there is a sheep in the back of the car.
In this way there was an efficiency to the editing that left more room for the narrative whilst never artificially pushing the pace or forcing the film on (time was made for panoramas that enhanced our understanding of the nature of journeying). This seems to be an antithesis to the Hollywood form where motives are clearly explained, actions made explicit and we are emotionally polarised into loving ‘the good guy’.
I’m interested in this following our time in India; it can be so easy to be reductive about people, relationships and cultures but we’re not designed to take on board such complexities. Instead I think we simplify things to make them safe and manageable, sometimes even to save ourselves the profound emotional cost of letting in experiences in a raw, unmediated form. I am presuming that for Ferroukhi this film was semi-autobiographical so the ability (or desire) to create distance may not have been an option. The result is a film that represented the complexities of relationship and culture in a way that was intimate, touching and without any clichés. A film well worth watching (again)
Couple ‘o links after the break
Technorati Tags: film
Universal Man
February 14th, 2007
apps I can’t do without
January 23rd, 2007I’m planning on starting from scratch with my present install of OS X - get everything tidy before the next update goes on sale.
I want to keep addresses (Plaxo), some of my Safari bookmarks and all my mail (which desperately needs sorting out) as well as all my media, or what’s left after recently dropping my external notebeek hard drive!!! But there’s also a slew of applications that I wouldn’t want to run my mac without, some of them are so embedded in my using the OS that I probably wouldn’t think to name them unless I thought about it.
There’s also a nice write-up about indispensable apps entitled Make your Mac a monster machine, got me back to playing with Dragthing but I can’t say as I dug ASM or fruitmenu. Can’t win ‘em all.
So here it is, my list of ‘apps-that-I-can’t-do-without-so-I-remember-to-install-them-when-I-wipe-my-MBP’: No doubt I’ll be adding to this list for a while
Read the rest of this entry »
Ch-di-de-a - Malaysian card game
January 20th, 2007
The aim of the game is to discard all of your 13 cards.
Deal 4 hands of 13 cards. If there are fewer than 4 players, leave the remaining hands as dead cards. If there are 2 players, play twice using the remaining 26 cards.
The player with the 3 of Diamonds starts by playing any of the card sequences (see below).
The next player to the left may play a higher sequence with the SAME NUMBER OF CARDS - either higher in number or same number in a higher suit.
The player may decline to play by saying pass - even if they are able to play.
The first round ends when no one wishes to play a higher sequence. The winner of that round (the person who laid a sequence that everyone else said pass to) now starts a new round with any new sequence/number of cards.
The winner is the first player to discard all their 13 cards.
The Museum of Unworkable Devices
January 19th, 2007Balzac’s The Hidden Masterpiece
January 17th, 2007Trials with Dvorak
December 28th, 2006So it’s conceivable that I have too much time on my hands (not sure that it’s true but ultimately if I can’t experiment whilst I’m doing my degree then when can I?!?) but for some reason I found myself looking at Dvorak as an alternative keyboard layout.
Dvorak fans say that it is quicker (not yet it’s not!), strains the hands less and helps you have better sex. 
(that’s a lie BTW)
Dvorak studied letter frequencies and the physiology of people’s hands and created a layout to adhere to these principles:
- It is easier to type letters alternating between hands.
- For maximum speed and efficiency, the most common letters and digraphs should be the easiest to type. This means that they should be on the home row, which is where the fingers rest, and under the strongest fingers.
- Likewise, the least common letters should be on the bottom row, which is the hardest row to reach.
- The right hand should do more of the typing, because most people are right-handed.
- It is more difficult to type digraphs with adjacent fingers than non-adjacent fingers.
- Stroking should generally move from the edges of the board to the middle. An observation of this principle is that when tapping fingers on a table, it is easier going from little finger to index than vice versa. This motion on a keyboard is called inboard stroke flow.
Taken from Wikipedia.
Technorati Tags: Dvorak
Circle Six Blog » Wordpress Theme Development Workflow for OSX
December 26th, 2006Circle Six Blog » Wordpress Theme Development Workflow for OSX:
Technorati Tags: BA.dger blog, Wordpress
Julian Opie
December 22nd, 2006A great website from the artist who brought us the Best of Blur album cover. I never used Mac os 9 much - I converted from The Darkside™ just as os X came in, but it doesn’t stop me enjoying this site a whole load.
And the art’s not bad either. . . .
Technorati Tags: art
Photoshop Tennis: My trip to Yosemite
December 13th, 2006If you’ve checked out Photoshop tennis and it’s rules, I suggest you have a look at this too - funniest thing I’ve seen all afternoon!!
Technorati Tags: Flickr
