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Observations on a month spent kind of holding the future
blog Monday 5th of July, 2010
“ I held an iPad in my hands today and it was kind of like holding the future. The future is expensive and has a glass front. ”
As far as first impressions go, these (by Gavin Logan on Friday's Geekest Drink) are pretty much on the money. It might seem a little late in the day to be writing up thoughts on a new device — after a month here and several in the States, some would perhaps feel that the topic is a little stale. But as many initial observations of the device seem to be based on shininess or pricetag, I thought it would be a good idea to hold off until I'd seen how it works in the real world for a non-trivial period of time.
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Flotilla
blog Thursday 15th of April, 2010
Breaking 'several months' of silence to review a weird little indie game — it's what blogs are for, apparently.
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Using the Apple Remote with your browser
blog Friday 7th of August, 2009
A couple of days ago I posted an article about creating an offline portfolio, and why you might want to. At the end of that post, I briefly mentioned setting up the Apple remote to allow you to easily navigate through your portfolio during an interview — without getting in the way of the people you're trying to demonstrate to.
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Building an Offline Portfolio Site
blog Thursday 6th of August, 2009
I had a sudden (and slightly unexpected) job interview last week, which resulted in the usual portfolio-based panic. Over the weekend, I quickly put together an offline portfolio site, built specifically to be shown on my MacBook during the interview. This turned out to be a far more interesting project than I had expected, so I thought I'd share my process, as well as my thoughts on putting this kind of project together. I'm not saying this sort of portfolio will guarantee you the job of your dreams (let's just say I'm still available for freelance work for the foreseeable future) but I certainly found it a great way to show off my screen-based work.
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the next generation
blog Friday 3rd of July, 2009
Has it really been over a month since my last little flurry of posts? I make a terrible blogger. To be honest, at least I've got a decent reason this time — I've had a whole bunch of great freelance projects that have occupied approximately 92% of my waking time (the other 8% was G&Ts in the sun, and why the hell not).
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Jayne Wallace: Digital Jewelry
blog Thursday 28th of May, 2009
Yesterday I made it to Super Mondays for the first time. Like many of the amazing things going on in this town, I only recently found out about it — I was gutted to find out that I missed a talk on Arduino recently. Not that I was disappointed at all, as there was a load of great stuff to see — students from the Culture Lab were demonstrating their work. This included 'home-made' multitouch computers and their 'ambient kitchen' project, which is aimed at helping sufferers of dementia to retain independence in the kitchen, and features Wiimote-based utensils which are able to sense the action which is being performed. Following the general demonstrations, there were several interesting talks — Patrick Olivier kicked off with an introduction to the work that takes place in the lab, and later Andrew Waite gave a short but informative talk about collecting Malware with the low-interaction honeypot Nepenthes. For me though the highlight of the talks was digital jeweller Jayne Wallace talking about the amazing work she has created with the lab.
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Robert Doisneau
blog Monday 25th of May, 2009
I got a chance to hang out in town the other day for the first time in ages, and while we were on our way up the hill Kathryn dragged me into the Side Gallery. Being (relatively) new to the area, I'd not been in there before, but I'll definitely be a regular visitor in the future — it's a magnificent gallery with a great layout for small, characterful exhibitions, and with a great stock of well-picked (and equally well priced) photo prints.
A Woman's Eye, the downstairs exhibition, was decent enough and had a couple of real gems in there, but the real treat was to be found at the top of the (precarious) staircase. Robert Doisneau's impossibly intimate shots of Paris life span sixty years, yet show no real progression in either style or subject — each is a moment as perfectly preserved as the last. A lovely, warm sense of humour runs through all of these images — it's never at the expense of the subject, and the theme almost entirely celebrates life's small victories. I obviously wasn't the only one who thought so — while we were there, three other couples made their way around the exhibition — each pair starting off in quiet discussion and gradually building up to an excited, giggling chatter.
The short short version? I left the gallery several units more happy than when I entered — I'm not sure I can give a better review (of anything) than that. The exhibition runs until Saturday 27th of June — if you're in Newcastle in the meantime, I can't recommend it thoroughly enough.
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A Tweeter in a Strange Land (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Twitter)
blog Sunday 15th of March, 2009
Everyone and their Mum has been writing about Twitter recently, thanks (in the UK at least) to Stephen Fry and Jonathan Woss bringing it to the mainstream's attention. I wrote about my own experiences with Twitter a few months ago, and I hadn't really intended to touch on the subject again. But, following a discussion on the subject on the MKMC mailing list recently, I thought it might be useful to put together a post pointing out some less obvious points about the service, with a view to helping a new user get the most out of Twitter. Read it here!
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Feast
blog Saturday 28th of February, 2009
If I weren't already looking forward to Heston Blumenthal's 'Feast' so much, I would be after reading Charlie Brooker's excellent preview:
“ It's like a special edition of Come Dine With Me hosted by the unhinged artisan murderer from the movie Se7en. ”
Aren't they all like that, though?
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Checking in...
blog Tuesday 17th of February, 2009
I guess it's been a while since I updated here. Life has well and truly been getting in the way for the last couple of months, since I finished working at K and decided to go freelance for a while. So, a quick status update...